The following appeared in a memo from the new vice president of Sartorian, a company that manufactures men's clothing.
"Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulties in obtaining reliable supplies of high quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. This coat should sell very well: since we have not offered an alpaca overcoat for five years and since our major competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat, there will be pent-up customer demand. Also, since the price of most types of clothing has increased in each of the past five years, customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats than they did five years ago, and our company profits will increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The memo states that alpaca overcoat production should resume since there is a new fabric supplier. In doing so, it will be profitable to the company. The conclusion drawn needs to be further evaluated due to the flaws in assumptions that it rests upon.
Firstly, the memo itself is coming from the new vice president of the company. How qualified is he to make assumptions about the quality of fabric and consumer behavior? If he has been with the company since the time the overcoat was discontinued, then he would have insight as to what brought upon its downfall and can attest to the consumer habits. He would also be able to differentiate quality versus sub par wool. This would strengthen his conclusion as he is knowledgeable about the workings of the company and is capable of drawing such conclusions. If he is new to the company, he has relied on reports to determine the tribulations the company went through to get reliable wool. This does not serve as a major problem; however, it means he does not know much about the company clientage. As a result, his predictions that the sales will increase because of pent-up demand would be baseless.
Additionally, the conclusion is based on the assumption that the new supplier will meet the needs of alpaca overcoat productions. How it determined that the new supplier will provide consistent high quality fabric? Further investigation needs to be done to solidify the fact that the supplier is reliable. If it is found that the new supplier is incompetent, then it would weaken the argument, since the production heavily relies on fabric. What also needs to be questioned is the cost of such fabric. If the prices are higher, the coats would need to be sold at a higher price to ensure selling at a higher price would lead to smaller profit.
The memo also assumes that there is no other companies that make the overcoat, besides the major competitor. It is possible for smaller companies to be making such coats and selling them at a lower price. This would weaken the argument as consumers would be unwilling to pay for exorbitant prices if there is a cheaper option. The high price is justified by the fact that other clothing prices have went up, but the vice president fails to mention which types. If the cost of dresses and pants have went up, but not coats, it would weaken his argument. Because the price of other clothing types increased, it does not mean it would justify the increased coat price.
In summation, for this conclusion to be justified there are some assumptions that need to be addressed. Determining the competency of the vice president, the reliability of the new fabric supplier, and the market for such coats will shed light on the issue.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 473 350
No. of Characters: 2205 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.664 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.662 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.571 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 143 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 73 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.92 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.291 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.56 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.292 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.498 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.131 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 400, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[6]
Message: Note: went is a past participle of "wend". Did you mean 'gone' (past participle of "go")?
Suggestion: gone
...he fact that other clothing prices have went up, but the vice president fails to men...
^^^^
Line 7, column 500, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[6]
Message: Note: went is a past participle of "wend". Did you mean 'gone' (past participle of "go")?
Suggestion: gone
.... If the cost of dresses and pants have went up, but not coats, it would weaken his ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, first, firstly, however, if, so, then, as to, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2265.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 473.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 4.78858350951 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66353547975 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67062629622 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.435517970402 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 691.2 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 29.4337493364 57.8364921388 51% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 90.6 119.503703932 76% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.92 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.08 5.70786347227 54% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.141998691239 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0485460386302 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0473501676442 0.0701772020484 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0830630758002 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0193923315244 0.0628817314937 31% => 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: 10.6 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.5 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.87 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.