The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Health Naturally, a small but expanding chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
"Our previous experience has been that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build one of our new stores in Plainsville, which clearly has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise equipment are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight-training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a program called Fitness for Life, 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 vice president of Health Naturally seems confident that opening up stores in Plainsville would be highly profitable since residents here are highly concerned with leading healthy lives and would surely purchase its health-related products. However, there are three main assumptions made to reach this conclusion that makes the argument weak.
Firstly, the vice president believes that since the local health club, which was nearly shut down about 5 years ago due to lack of business, has more members now than ever with classes being always full, this could be a substantial reason for the residents of Plainsville to be interested in Health Naturally products. The question that comes to mind is, do we know why there was a lack of business earlier? Or the reason for the business to be booming now? The shortage in business could have been due to lack of expert trainers in the club or due to inadequate infrastructure. With changes in the infrastructure and staff, the residents are currently enjoying the club's services and are hence more active. Also, the classes are "full" maybe due to the required strength of the class being minimal. No information is provided on the same. Hence, if the above reasonings hold true, then the argument made is insufficient as it fails to assure the profits that the vice president so confidently states.
Another reason to point our doubts towards the vice president's argument is that he assumes that since the school children are also involved in daily fitness activities, there would be contribution to the company revenues from this section of the Plainsville population as well. Why would students purchase health food and products at such an early age as a booster to their fitness levels? Why would parents endorse new packaged brands for their children's health? Wouldn't they rather have their children consume the natural healthy options available to them like fruits and nuts instead of packaged proteins for all we know! If the above argument proves to be true, the argument posed in the memorandum fails to hold water.
Last but not the least, another assumption made by the vice president is that based on his previous experience. Since stores have been profitable in areas with residents highly concerned with leading healthy lives, opening stores in Plainsville would also bring in high profits as it has similarly enthusiastic residents. How can we compare the people of two different towns based on just one factor, i.e., their interest in leading healthy lives? Maybe the residents of areas as per the vice president's earlier experiences belonged to a high income bracket who could afford to buy such products. Whereas, the residents of Plainsville belonging to the middle class believe that regular exercise is sufficient and are not very keen on investing in health related products. If true, the assumption made in the memorandum stands moot.
In conclusion, the arguments provided in the memorandum by the vice president of Health Naturally fails to stand ground due to the inaccurate assumptions on which it is based upon. We would need further information as discussed above to perform a detailed analysis of the prospects of expanding the business to Plainsville.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 531 350
No. of Characters: 2657 1500
No. of Different Words: 261 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.8 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.004 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.699 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 152 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.087 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.705 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.522 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.48 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 747, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
.... Also, the classes are 'full' maybe due to the required strength of th...
^^
Line 6, column 465, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: Wouldn't
...aged brands for their childrens health? Wouldnt they rather have their children consume...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, may, similarly, so, then, thus, well, whereas, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2727.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 529.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.1550094518 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79583152331 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76292531778 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 263.0 204.123752495 129% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.497164461248 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 826.2 705.55239521 117% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.8696221351 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.954545455 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0454545455 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.86363636364 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.224014040128 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0582506525201 0.0743258471296 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0591936254019 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137475391227 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0346775547945 0.0628817314937 55% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.23 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.