The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quit Manufacturing During the past year Quit 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

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quit Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Quit 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 Quit 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 above makes a case for reducing the length of their work shifts in order to allow employees to get adequate amounts of sleep. In turn, the company hopes that adequate levels of sleep will lead to fewer on-the-job accidents. While seemingly well-intended and even potentially beneficial, the argument is weakened by the fact that it relies on unsubstantiated assumptions.

Firstly, the argument begins by comparing the number of accidents at Quiot Manufacturing to the nearby Panoply Industries plant, with Quiot Manufacturing having reported 30% more accidents than Panoply. In doing this, the argument assumes that all on-the-job accidents were reported at Panoply Industries. While it is possible that all accidents were reported, it is also possible that either company had false reports of the number of on-the-job accidents. Additionally, different companies may have different thresholds for reporting an accident, which may cause inaccurate numbers. Since the argument does not provide evidence backing up these statistics, it cannot accurately assume that these statistics are correct. Therefore, this invalidates the argument that fewer accidents occur at Panoply Industries due to shorter shifts.

If, however, these statistics were correct and Quiot Manufacturing indeed does suffer from 30% more on-the-job accidents, the argument still falsely assumes that sleep is the only factor causing this discrepancy. While fatigue and sleep deprivation may be a contributing factor towards accidents, there can certainly be a number of other contributing factors, such as work environment and safety protocols. If one of these other factors is the root cause of the accidents at Quiot Manufacturing, then decreasing shifts to allow for more sleep will provide the company and its employees no benefit. Without evidence that accidents are solely caused by fatigue and sleep deprivation, this assumption weakens the argument presented above.

Finally, even if sleep deprivation was the sole contributor to on-the-job accidents at Quiot Manufacturing, the argument incorrectly assumes that employees will use the extra hour that they have off of work to sleep. The argument does not present any way to guarantee that employees will sleep more if they work less. Once employees are off of work, they are presumably free to spend their time as they please. While some employees may use this time to sleep, others may use this time for personal or family activities. As the argument does not guarantee that employees will actually get more sleep if this policy goes into place, the argument is weakened.

Overall, this argument does not provide sufficient evidence to make it convincing. It relies on several unwarranted assumptions that weaken the argument. Before the company puts this policy into place, they should gather substantial and indisputable evidence about the root cause of the accidents at Quiot Manufacturing.

Votes
Average: 7.8 (2 votes)
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Essays by user kayli.vesel@gm… :

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 196, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'offed'.
Suggestion: offed
... will use the extra hour that they have off of work to sleep. The argument does not...
^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, firstly, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, well, while, such as

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2499.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 452.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.52876106195 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61088837703 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93021514896 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.473451327434 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 777.6 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.7721909359 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5238095238 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.33333333333 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.154013661483 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0525463941075 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0674019076502 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0855607572466 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0652727537287 0.0628817314937 104% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.79 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.07 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 452 350
No. of Characters: 2434 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.611 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.385 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.838 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 178 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 146 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 78 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.524 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.673 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.356 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.103 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5