The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
“According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable.
Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The advertising director of Super Screen Movie argues that a greater proportion of their budget should be allocated to avertising and promoting their content. According to the director, this should be done to overcome the decline in audience that the production company has faced over the past year. He reaches this conclusion based on the fact that the percentage of positive reviews of their movies have gone up. This leads him to believe that their movies are of good-quality, but are not promulgated among the public. However, two questions need to be asked before we can consider his argument, and hence his conclusion, to be a reasonable one.
First of all, is it possible that the percentage of positive reviews have increased because of a significant decrease in the number of people who are reviewing the movies? If there are very few people watching these movies and reviewing them in the first place, that could mean that a lot of negative reviews, which would have been otherwise casted, are not affecting the reviews right now. The director assumes that the percentage of positive reviews alone is a ground-truth indicator of the quality of the movies. But the amount of people watching these movies, and therefore leaving a review, should also be taken into account. If the percentage of positive reviews have gone up because of a reduced denominator of the number of people opting for Super Screen movies, that could be an indicator of bad quality content. This could imply that their movies have deteriorated to the extent that people will not bother themselves to even leave a review on how bad it is. In such a scenario, spending more money behind advertising might not be the most productive thing to do.
Secondly, is there a statistic that indicates that the outreach of Super Screen movies have actually declined compared to the previous years? The director is very fast in assuming that the decline in their followers is because of a lack of promotion from their end. However, before making such a strong assumption, he should try to come up with a numerical statistic that shows how the outreach of Super Screen movies have changed over the past year. If he sees that the number of people who know about the Super Screen movies have not siginificantly changed, this could imply that people are deliberately turning away from these movies. This, in turn, would mean that the budget increase should not be focused towards promotion alone, but rather towards the overall betterment of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
In conclusion, the director of the Super Screen Movie Company makes some very bold assumptions, leading him to a possibly wrong conclusion about his comapny's budget allotments. To make his argument more robust, he should find answers to the two questions mentioned above.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 472 350
No. of Characters: 2306 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.661 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.886 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.833 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.516 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.161 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
The advertising director of Super Screen...
^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...conclusion, to be a reasonable one. First of all, is it possible that the pe...
^^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...be the most productive thing to do. Secondly, is there a statistic that indi...
^^^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...er Screen Movie Production Company. In conclusion, the director of the Super...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, therefore, in conclusion, first of all, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2359.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 472.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 4.99788135593 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6610686524 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61540496149 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 213.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451271186441 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 741.6 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 34.7232828401 57.8364921388 60% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.157894737 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8421052632 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.73684210526 5.70786347227 118% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.258746010512 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0876638555027 0.0743258471296 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0609364186128 0.0701772020484 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.167038204632 0.128457276422 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0804568184005 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.5 14.3799401198 101% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.17 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.