The following appeared in a memorandum written by the assistant manager of a store that sells gourmet food items from various countries:
“A local wine store made an interesting discovery last month: it sold more French than Italian wine on days when it played recordings of French accordion music, but it sold more Italian than French wine on days when Italian songs were played. Therefore, I recommend that we put food specialties from one particular country on sale for a week at a time and play only music from that country while the sale is going on. By this means we will increase our profits in the same way that the wine store did, and we will be able to predict more precisely what items we should stock at any given time.”
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. (used with permission from mba.com)
The assistant manager recommends that the food store play music of the country from which the food specialties that are on sale that week come in order to boost the store's profits. The fact that a local wine store sold more French wine than Italian wine when playing French music, and more Italian wine than French wine when playing Italian music, is used as support for why this recommendation will be successful. However, the argument as presented has several logical flaws. The author confuses correlation with causation and misunderstands the distinction between profits and sales. As such, the argument is unconvincing.
First, the author states that because the wine store sold more wine from a country when music from that same country was playing, it must be true that the music caused this increase in sales. This is a weak claim, and an example of the author mistaking a correlation for a causal relationship. This increase in sales for wines from each respective region could have been a complete coincidence - in which case no causal relationship would exist - or could have been due to another factor that the assistant manager does not consider. To illustrate, if, when more French wine was sold, wine from France was being sold at a discount to Italian wine, then this could very likely have caused the increase in sales. Without ruling out the many other possible explanations, the author's claim is weak and thus it is not likely that implementing a similar strategy in the food store would result in the same outcome that the wine store experienced.
The second issue to address is the fact that the assistant manager claims that, if the food store were to follow through with this recommendation, profits would increase. The only support that the author provides for this recommendation - albeit weak - is that the wine store's sales of one category of wine versus another were higher, but the author never states that profits were higher as a result. In making this logical leap, the assistant manager fails to consider the relative margin of certain products over others. If, for instance, a strategy would enable a store to sell twice as many of product X as it does product Y, but product Y's profit margin is 4 times higher than Product X's, this plan would likely not increase profits for the store in question. As such, without information about whether the local wine store saw both an increase in sales and profits, and without any details of the gourmet food store's profit margins on different products, this claim is weak and thus the store should not jump at following this recommendation.
Several additional pieces of information could have been included to make the assistant manager's recommendation more logically sound. For example, if the author were able to rule out all other alternative explanations for the increase in wine sales from each region at the local wine store - such as price differences or availability of inventory in store for each type of wine - then the existence of a causal relationship between music and sales would be much more likely. Further, information about how the wine store's profits were affected last month, as well as a study of relative profit margins for different food products from various countries, would help validate whether the food store is likely to see an increase in profit from implementing the recommended strategy.
In conclusion, the assistant manager's argument is weak as it is predicated on the existence of an unproven causal relationship and does not adequately distinguish between strategies that increase sales and those that increase profits. While it could be true that the recommendation will lead to the assistant manager's desired results, it is impossible to validate the claims made without additional evidence, such as the examples mentioned above. As such, the assistant manager's claim is weak and the recommendation should not be followed without further analysis.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 654 350
No. of Characters: 3253 1500
No. of Different Words: 240 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.057 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.974 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.652 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 224 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 173 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.667 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.353 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.531 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 89, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...ave been included to make the assistant managers recommendation more logically sound. Fo...
^^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 30, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...tegy. In conclusion, the assistant managers argument is weak as it is predicated on...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, second, so, then, thus, well, while, for example, for instance, in conclusion, such as, as a result, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 32.0 19.6327345309 163% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3327.0 2260.96107784 147% => OK
No of words: 654.0 441.139720559 148% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0871559633 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.05701727356 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7219645312 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 254.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.388379204893 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1032.3 705.55239521 146% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 77.0643339336 57.8364921388 133% => OK
Chars per sentence: 158.428571429 119.503703932 133% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.1428571429 23.324526521 134% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.47619047619 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.362028568391 0.218282227539 166% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113871143021 0.0743258471296 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0896704899827 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.229388530169 0.128457276422 179% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0830329507581 0.0628817314937 132% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.1 14.3799401198 126% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.01 48.3550499002 83% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.83 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.0 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.