The following appeared in a memo from the marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores.
"Five years ago, Fish Emporium started advertising in the magazine Exotic Pets Monthly. Their stores saw sales increase by 15 percent. The three Fish Emporium stores in Gulf City saw an even greater increase than that. Because Top Dog has some of its largest stores in Gulf City, it seems clear that we should start placing our own ads in Exotic Pets Monthly. If we do so, we will be sure to reverse the recent trend of declining sales and start making a profit again."
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 marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores concludes that if Top Dog starts to place their ads in Exotic Pets Monthly, they will succeed to reverse the recent trend of declining sales and start making a profit again. He provides support for this conclusion by providing evidence of Fish Emporium which initiated advertising in the Exotic Pet Monthly magazine and their sales increased by 15 percent. However, the argument is based on some unwarranted assumptions and so is seriously flawed. Before evaluating the argument, these following three evidences must be provided.
First of all, it is important to evaluate whether the trend of sales increase still exist today as it was five years ago. The author prematurely assumes that the sales increase trend has remained constant over the last five years. However, this may not be the case. It is quite possible that sales of Fish Emporium have declined a bit in recent days despite advertizing in the magazine. The argument fails to consider this case and so it is seriously weakened.
Secondly, it is important to evaluate whether this 15 percent increase in sales is a representative of big sales gain or not. The director assumes that this sales increase provide a quite big gain in the sales. In reality, situation may be different. It is very likely that Fish Emporium sold only a very little amount of their products. If it is so, then the increase in sales will be of very negligible amount. For example, if they sold 100 products in a month, then after sales increment they would sell only 115 products, which is not a significant increase at all. The argument fails to address this issue and so it does not hold water.
Finally, it is important to evaluate whether Top Dog has many big stores as Fish Emporium in the city or not. The author does not provide any evidence about the number of stores Top Dog owns in the city, rather only an opaque data. It is possible that Top Dog has only 2 big shops in the city. If this is so, then they will not be able to earn the same amount of increase in sales as Fish Emporium saw. The argument fails to consider this and thus is seriously flawed.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is seriously flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the director is able to provide evidences for the above stated three cases, then it will be possible to evaluate the argument properly and recommend placing ads in Exotic Pets Monthly otherwise it will remain seriously flawed as it is on surface.
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Comments
e-rater score 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: 23 15
No. of Words: 442 350
No. of Characters: 2033 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.585 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.6 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.487 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.217 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.846 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.503 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.101 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 370, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...n seriously flawed as it is on surface.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, then, thus, for example, in conclusion, first of all
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 : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2092.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 442.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 4.73303167421 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58517132086 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.55179550227 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.434389140271 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 670.5 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 51.4094722539 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 90.9565217391 119.503703932 76% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2173913043 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.335497530389 0.218282227539 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0865990639981 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0882236169955 0.0701772020484 126% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.195770542504 0.128457276422 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.115820759136 0.0628817314937 184% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.5 14.3799401198 73% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.15 12.5979740519 81% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.58 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.