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 argument made by the marketing director of Top Dog Pet Stores claims that the company should start advertising in Exotic Pets Monthly in order to reverse the recent trend of declining sales. The director argues that because Fish Emporium had success with the advertising in Gulf City, then Top Dog Pet Stores surely will profit from such actions as well. However, this claim is based on insufficient evidence and assumptions of correlation. The argument is weak because it lies on a faulty line of reasoning and lack of evidence.
The primary issue at hand is the assumption of correlation, and this err is made multiple times throughout the statement. To start with, it is assumed that Fish Emporium’s sales increased by 15 percent due to the advertising. However, we need more information to fill in the gaps of this picture. What other factors could have been at play to influence the sales increase? It is possible that the company implemented other marketing strategies as well and that the advertising in the magazine didn’t actually affect sales. Without this additional information, the picture painted by the argument is lacking. By relying on a faulty assumption, conclusion made by Top Dog is vulnerable.
A secondary example of erroneous reasoning can be seen in the director’s assumption that because advertising in the Exotic Pets monthly helped increase sales at Fish Emporium, such advertisements would additionally increase sales for Top Dog. However, just because x action had y result in one scenario does not mean that this correlation is necessarily repeatable. An additional flaw in the argument presented by Top Dog is that of inadequate evidence and insufficient data. Information such as exactly how much of an increase in sales Fish Emporium saw in Gulf City is required in order to fully assess the situation. Without this information, it is not determinable if the sales were of a significant increase, and we cannot base statements on data that is not clearly reliable.
In conclusion, the suggestion made by the marketing director is tarnished by assumptions of correlations seen multiple times throughout the statement, and the lack of integral data that would create the entire picture needed to evaluate the argument at hand. If the argument provided the required data. Because the given argument contains countless flaws, it is therefore weak and unsound.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- ???
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minimum 3 arguments wanted.
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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: 19 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 1968 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.046 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.884 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 143 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.526 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.87 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.579 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.481 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
The argument made by the marketing direc...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 8, column 260, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...eeded to evaluate the argument at hand. If the argument provided the required data...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, however, if, second, so, then, therefore, well, in conclusion, such as, to start with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2033.0 2260.96107784 90% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.22622107969 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03986939995 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.491002570694 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 643.5 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.4100766199 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.0 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.4736842105 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => 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: 0.292783655627 0.218282227539 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.080084498241 0.0743258471296 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.105520301654 0.0701772020484 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.177434077459 0.128457276422 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102016685748 0.0628817314937 162% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.05 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.89 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.