The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Quiot Manufacturing had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than at the nearby Panoply Industries plant, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts say that significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep." 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 that the author puts forward is likely to arouse several questions in the mind of even a cursory reader of the text as it contains a few serious flaws. The author also overlooks some crucial points to be dealt with before jumping into a conclusion about the measure undertaken by Quiot Manufacturing to reduce the on-the-job accidents.
To start with, the author states that working hours in a shift in Panoply Industries are one hour less than that in Quiot Manufacturing and he also provides us the information about the number of shifts in later company, but never mentions about the same in the former company. Thus, without knowing the number of shifts in Panoply Industries, it is not logical to draw an inference about the total working hours in both companies because it can happen that the number of shifts in Panoply is more than that in Quiot.
Moreover, the author claims that in Quiot on-the-job accidents are 30percent more than that in Panoply, so we can’t identify the basis of this information that is whether it is measured on the basis of total number of on-the-job accidents or it is the difference of the percentages of the accidents in the two companies. Without reliable information, we can’t infer the effect of reducing working hours in shift. To illustrate it clearly, if the analysis is on the basis of the former, then conclusion drawn from the argument is not correct because if the number of employees in the Quiot is more than that in Panoply, then it is not astonishing matter that occurrence of accidents is high in Quiot.
Lastly, from the argument we can’t apprehend about the lifestyle of workers that is, how they spend their time after office. If they get sufficient time for their rest before enforcement of proposed regulation but are not use appropriately, then there remains a doubt about the success of Quoit Manufacturing’s decision.
In conclusion, the argument doesn't seem logically convincing & tenable. The author could have bolstered his point by nullifying the above mentioned facts.
but are not use appropriately,
but do not use appropriately,
argument 1 -- not OK.
argument 2 -- not OK.
argument 3 -- OK
flaws:
You should not always ask for evidence or data. Try to find loopholes.
Read a good sample:
http://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/following-appeared-memo-vice-pres…
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 11 15
No. of Words: 346 350
No. of Characters: 1674 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.313 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.838 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.694 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 120 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.455 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.512 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.388 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.712 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.192 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5