The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city’s council on the arts:
“In a recent citywide poll, 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts
than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our
city’s art museums has increased by a similar percentage. Since the corporate funding that supports public television,
where most of the visual arts programs appear, is now being threatened with severe cuts, we can expect that
attendance at our city’s art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the city’s funds for supporting the arts
should be reallocated to public television.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and
the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions
underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can
also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would
make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The memorandum by the council on arts suggests that the funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television by asserting that the attendance at the city's art museum will decrease once the corporate funding for public television is decreased. However, the argument has various assumptions and claims that are incorrect. The argument makes three critical errors which makes this a weak argument.
First, the argument claims that there is a correlation between the increase in the number of people watching television programs about the visual arts and an increase in the number of people who visit the art's museum without giving citing any evidence for the claim. There is no way to know, without looking at further facts, whether these two increases are actually correlated. It is very much possible that the overall enthusiasm for arts has increased in the past five years and hence people are both watching television program related to arts and going to the art museum. Without any evidence, this claim of correlation is weak and weakens the argument.
Second, the argument assumes that if the corporate funding that supports public television is cut, the attendance to the museum will also decrease. This assumption has no evidence or basis provided. It could very well be possible that the attendance at the city's museum will increase once there are fewer television programs related to visual arts. We cannot make this assumption without any evidence. This assumption is based on another assumption that the number of people who watch television programs related to visual arts will decrease because of the decrease in funding. This assumption has no basis. The viewership might remain the same, or increase as long as the programs are not canceled. Even if the programs are canceled, such a move could leave people yearning to watch arts and that might increase the attendance at the Museum. Hence, without proper justification, the assumption made by the argument in the memorandum is weak and is another critical error in the argument.
Finally, the argument does not take into account whether there will be lesser funding available to the museum if the funds that support arts are reallocated to public television. If the museum has less funding, it's attendance might be negatively affected. Without this information, the argument lacks good grounds on which the claims are made.
The author of the memorandum needs to include evidence that can provide the validity to the assumptions and the correlation made in order to thoroughly evaluate the argument, without which, the argument is inherently weak.
- The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city s council on the arts In a recent citywide poll 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago Dur 73
- The following appeared in an announcement issued by the publisher of The Mercury, a weekly newspaper:“Since a competing lower-priced newspaper, The Bugle, was started five years ago, The Mercury’s circulation has declined by 10,000 readers. The best w 77
- The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city s council on the arts In a recent citywide poll 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago Dur 73
- “In a recent citywide poll, fifteen percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city’s art 55
- “Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day service in 1970 to 20 82
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 427 350
No. of Characters: 2171 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.546 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.084 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.588 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.35 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.319 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.35 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 206, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'arts'' or 'art's'?
Suggestion: arts'; art's
...e in the number of people who visit the arts museum without giving citing any eviden...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, hence, however, if, look, second, so, thus, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2211.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 427.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17798594848 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66259147249 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.414519906323 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 689.4 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.8236684351 57.8364921388 117% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.55 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.35 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
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: 0.151569026257 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0476484316503 0.0743258471296 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0642236533305 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0895013943238 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0581419261558 0.0628817314937 92% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => 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: 7.64 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.