For many years the city of Grandview has provided annual funding for the Grandview Symphony. Last year, however, private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent and attendance at the symphony's concerts-in-the-park series doubled. The symphony has also announced an increase in ticket prices for next year. Given such developments, some city commissioners argue that the symphony can now be fully self-supporting, and they recommend that funding for the symphony be eliminated from next year's budget."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
As tempting as it might be to shunt some funds away as soon as their outcomes improve, it is necessary for such transition to have solid grounds. In case of Grandview Symphony, even though the recommending commissioners have mentioned some numerical and statistical figures, the entirety of their report is severely flawed, both quantitatively and logically.
As for the numbers, using a logarithmic measure to report a change in monetary terms is especially tricky: Although a 200% increase is intuitively huge, it is the original value before the increase is what puts it in context. Furthermore, only by putting the amount of governmental funding for the foundation in comparison with that of the private sponsors that we can be able to deduce a change of trend.
Added to the previous is a question of methodology. The recommenders did not seem to address whether other confounding variables may be responsible for the increase in ticket sales. For example, an exceptionally successful composition might boom their concert attendance for a year, but for this effect to be extrapolated probably needs further scrutiny. This brings us to yet another wild assumption: the annual success of the band cannot be explained by an overall prosperity in the music industry. That is, unless a control is used as a frame of comparison, we cannot really be sure about the performance of Grandview symphony.
However, provided that this year's success is as properly fathomed as the recommenders claim, whether such success would be sustainable without the governmental aids is still questionable. Also, it must be ensured that the increased reliance on private contributions would not end up affecting the originality of the content, especially given the classical nature of their work and it being against the mainstream, and thereby commercially preferred, taste.
In conclusion, the provided recommendation seem to be based on weak assumptions and incoherent narratives. For once, the quantitative measurements of the outcomes based on which the advice was given are essentially missing and a bit awkward. Additionally, a correlational piece of evidence was hastily extended to presume causality with a risky disregard for both the nature of the symphony and the general musical environment.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1884 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.219 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.137 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 142 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.786 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.046 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.29 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.593 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 29, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'years'' or 'year's'?
Suggestion: years'; year's
...mphony. However, provided that this years success is as properly fathomed as the ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, may, really, so, still, as for, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1936.0 2260.96107784 86% => OK
No of words: 361.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.36288088643 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35889894354 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.22059063206 2.78398813304 116% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.581717451524 0.468620217663 124% => OK
syllable_count: 616.5 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.2664386796 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.285714286 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.7857142857 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.5 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.199913515811 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0579733638405 0.0743258471296 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0416383873719 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0950461498187 0.128457276422 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0290843771855 0.0628817314937 46% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 37.64 48.3550499002 78% => OK
smog_index: 13.0 7.1628742515 181% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.78 8.32208582834 118% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 16.0 12.3882235529 129% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.