Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products, is opening its next franchise in the town of Plainsville. The store should prove to be very successful: Nature's Way franchises tend to be most profitable in areas where residents lead healthy lives, and clearly Plainsville is such an area. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. Finally, Plainsville's schoolchildren represent a new generation of potential customers: these schoolchildren are required to participate in a fitness-for-life program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.
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.
The argument above consists of a premise that the lifestyle of the towner of Plainsville is similar to those in areas where chains of Nature’s way are successful and a conclusion that new stores opening in the town of Plainsville would be successful too. And the author gives three evidence to support the premise. However, this line of reasoning relies on several problematic assumptions; without these additional assumptions, evidence the author gives cannot be used to support the premise. Also, the argument itself is not valid; that is, even if the evidence are given support the premises and the premises are actually true, the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed.
Let me start with the evidence. The first evidence suggested is the report of merchants at Plainsville which indicate that sales of exercise clothes and shoes are at all-time highs. Unfortunately, for this evidence to support the premise, we need additional evidence indicating that what brings those high sales of the products is the residents’ lifestyle rather than other things. However, the author does not give any such evidence. Since this evidence is missing, it might be that such high sales are due to just by accident. If the reports were made at the beginning of the year, since many people made a healthy lifestyle as their new year’s resolution, the results do not suggest any convincing evidence for the premise. The reports could be exaggerated and deflected toward a more positive direction. The same thing can be said for the health club membership, the weight training, and aerobics classes registration.
Second, the author commits a fallacy known for the confusion of correlation with causation. The author argues that new stores of Plainsville will be successful since the lifestyle of the population is similar to that of other areas in which the stores win successes. However, this assumes that the successes of the other areas are due to the lifestyle of the customers. And since the author does not give any evidence for it, the argument itself is not valid. Consider the following possible scenario. The fact is the successes are due to the higher proportion of older people in the areas whereas Plainsville is a relatively young town. Since older people tend to be more interested in a healthy lifestyle, the correlation between lifestyle and the successfulness is not the essence. If so, the new store of the Plainsville which lacks the older population for its success would not be successful as the author argues.
The other premise is also problematic. The author cites prospect customer bring success to the company. However, this is not guaranteed. This is because although for a company to be successful in a market, the net population of the customer should increase, the author does not give any evidence or argument for it. Without it, although the new generation enters the market, the total number of customers could be reduced. As they enter the market, there would be people going out of the market. People would move out of the town and even die. If these were the case, the size of the market would be contracted, resulting in less success of the new store in the area.
In sum, the argument above neither valid nor sound. The premises need to be supported by additional evidence, and the entailment does not guarantee the conclusion. If the author could give additional evidence which indicates (1) that the premises are well-supported; (2) that the entailment is not the result of statistical luck; and (3) the demography of the area will not be changed or, if changed, changed in favor of the argument, why should I reject the reasoning?
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 31 15
No. of Words: 613 350
No. of Characters: 2972 1500
No. of Different Words: 237 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.976 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.848 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.669 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 211 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 164 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 118 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 74 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.774 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.273 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.419 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.281 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.446 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, first, however, if, second, so, well, whereas
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 40.0 19.6327345309 204% => Less to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 34.0 16.3942115768 207% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3072.0 2260.96107784 136% => OK
No of words: 613.0 441.139720559 139% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.01141924959 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.97582523872 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81710071886 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 253.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.412724306688 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 970.2 705.55239521 138% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 23.0 8.76447105788 262% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 31.0 19.7664670659 157% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 66.6314822173 57.8364921388 115% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.0967741935 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7741935484 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.96774193548 5.70786347227 34% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 8.20758483034 195% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.144768954054 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0395035130897 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0427365766083 0.0701772020484 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0857702309043 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0276565530771 0.0628817314937 44% => 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: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.62 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 62.5 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.75 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.