The following appeared in a newsletter offering advice to investors.
"Over 80 percent of the respondents to a recent survey indicated a desire to reduce their intake of foods containing fats and cholesterol, and today low-fat products abound in many food stores. Since any of the food products currently marketed by Old Dairy Industries are high in fat and cholesterol, the company's sales are likely to diminish greatly and company profits will no doubt decrease. We therefore advise Old Dairy stockholders to sell their shares, and other investors not to purchase stock in this company."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide wheter the advice 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 advice.
In this letter, the author advice to investors that they'd better sell the stock of Old Dairy Industries, which mainly marketed the products containing high fat and cholesterol, due to the recent trend of reducing intake of foods with fats and cholesterol. Although it may seem convincing at first glance, but the deficiency of answers lead me to question the validity of the argument.
First, the author need to answer the question about the soundness of survey. Since the author only provide the proportion of the survey result, not the exact number, the total number of the surveyant may minunte, which possibly bring the conclusion that the survey is not credible. The author should answer the question about the exact number of respondents. Furthermore, since the question in survey is not concerning the real reduction but concerning the only desire to reduce the high fat and cholesterol product, the conclusion of the survey is possibly misuse of the result. Therefore, the author should answer the question about the credibilitiy of survey.
Moreover, the author should answer the question about the background of Old Dairy Industries. Because the only information suggested in this passage is about the product that the company recently mareketed, not the whold product of the company, there may other well-made products except high fat and cholesterol contained products. Even if there are no products without high fat and cholesterol, it is not sound that the profit of the company will decrease by diminishing company's sales. Since the profit is not directly concerned with the total amount of sales, it cannot be predicted without internal financial information of the company. Thus, the author can bolster the argument by answering the question about the background of Old Dairy Industries.
Lastly, question about the stock of Old Dairy Industries should be answered. Price of the stock is determined by multiple factors, not single factors: profit, such as the total financial amount of the company, and even the contribution of the company to its regional community. Therefore, rash prediction of the stock price based on only estimation of the profit variation may be significantly dangerous. In addition, selling of stock immediately may not be profitable for the stockholders. Since the whole argument is based on the people's behavior tendency, it can be changed anytime. It induces the conclusion that the selling of the stock based on non-adamant reason may not bring profit to the stockholder. Therfore, the author should answer to the question about the stock of Old Dairy Industries.
In summary, the argument is unpersuasive because of lack of answer corresponds to the aforementioned questions. In order to bolster the argument, the author should give concrete answers to the questions about the soundness of survey, Old Dairy Industries, and its stock.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 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: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2371 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.132 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.716 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 185 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 102 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.299 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.391 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.391 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.157 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 53, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: they'd
...er, the author advice to investors that theyd better sell the stock of Old Dairy Indu...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 401, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...rthermore, since the question in survey is not concerning the real reduction but concerning the o...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 532, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'peoples'' or 'people's'?
Suggestion: peoples'; people's
...ince the whole argument is based on the peoples behavior tendency, it can be changed an...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, if, lastly, may, moreover, so, therefore, thus, well, in addition, in summary, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2426.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 461.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26247288503 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63367139033 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8407758094 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.412147505423 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 733.5 705.55239521 104% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.4874503186 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.523809524 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.9523809524 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.28571428571 5.70786347227 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.129856692353 0.218282227539 59% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0409914761587 0.0743258471296 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0765226668627 0.0701772020484 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0934169648871 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.086133205558 0.0628817314937 137% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
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: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.55 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => 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
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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.