The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Alta Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Alta Manufacturing had thirty percent more on-the-job accidents than nearby Panoply Industries, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts believe that a significant contributing factor in many accidents is fatigue caused by sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Alta, we recommend shortening each of our three work shifts by one hour. If we do this, our employees will get adequate amounts of sleep."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the memo from the vice president of Alta Manufacturing, it is concluded that reducing shifting time by one hour in each 3 shifts will reduce the on-the-job catastrophes in the workplace. The conclusion is based on the fact that reducing work hours will enable the workers to get sufficient time to sleep. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, three specific questions need to be answered.
To begin, does the total number of accidents that happened in Alta Manufacturing correspond to the total number of accidents at Panoply Industries? In other words, does the higher percentage indicate higher number of accidents? It may be possible that total number of tasks that have been performed in Alta is many fold than the number of tasks completed by Panoply. Perhaps, in a week Alta faces only 50 accidents in 10000 different tasks and in contrast, the Panoply confronts 30 accidents in 1000 tasks. If any of the above points gets merits, the conclusion will be seriously weakened.
Secondly, is the relationship between sleeping hour and number of job accidents related? The vice president of Alta Manufacturing prematurely assumes that lesser sleeping hour is attributed to the higher percentage of accidents. Perhaps, Alta manufacturing does not teach the newly appointed employees about the operating procedures of the machines and that's why frequent accidents are occurred for past few days. Besides, it may be possible that the Panoply industries don't have the same infrastructure and machines kindred to the Alta manufacturing. If any of the above becomes true, the argument does not hold water.
Last but not the least, will additional sleeping hours really decrease the number of on-the-job accidents at Alta? A sudden drop in working hours will force the employees to complete the same amount of tasks in a shorter time. Workers have to increase their productivity and work swiftly to reach the target outputs. By doing jobs in a hurry, it may be possible that the number of accidents even rise twice or thrice than the current number. If this point comes to light, the recommendation of the vice president will be collapsed and there will be no scope to further evaluate his recommendation.
To summarize, the argument, as it stands now is seriously flawed because of its' reliance on too many unwarranted assumptions. Hence, the vice president needs to provide answers to all these three questions as discussed in the above writing and present evidence (preferably in a systematic research form) to make his argument reasonable and to evaluate his recommendation.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 424 350
No. of Characters: 2135 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.538 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.035 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.886 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 64 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.653 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.064 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 197, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...esser sleeping hour is attributed to the higher percentage of accidents. Perhaps,...
^^
Line 5, column 355, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: that's
...perating procedures of the machines and thats why frequent accidents are occurred for...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 472, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...be possible that the Panoply industries dont have the same infrastructure and machin...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
besides, but, hence, however, if, may, really, second, secondly, so, in contrast, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => 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: 2190.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 423.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17730496454 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53508145475 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96764234053 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.505910165485 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.2281457259 57.8364921388 71% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.5 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.15 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.8 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => 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: 0.263131869627 0.218282227539 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0777111514724 0.0743258471296 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0662173488084 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14093374728 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0636225041808 0.0628817314937 101% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.76 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.56 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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.