The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a listener-supported public radio station.
"For the past year, as part of an effort to broaden our supporter base, our Folk on the Air program has allocated less time to traditional American folk music and more time to Latino music and world music. In recent months, many long-term supporters of our station have written to complain about what they describe as the un-American bias of the program. In addition, the local newspaper has published a recent editorial critical of our shift in programming. Therefore, in order to forestall any further adverse publicity for the station and to avoid the loss of additional listener-supporters, we should discontinue our current emphasis on Latino and world music and restore the time devoted to traditional American folk music to its former level."
Respond by writing an essay in which you discuss the specific evidence you would need to judge the validity of the argument and explain how this evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The conclusion at the first glance might seem correct but it has serious flaws which need to be addressed if such a statement needs to be considered at all. The business manager seems to have taken a survey and deliver a conclusion from a very vague analysis which should not stand in the boardroom discussion of the public radio station.
Speaking about analysis, the business manager mentions the time spent in the American folk music is lesser compared to the Latino and world music genres, which lacks details such as number of hours difference, number of people listening etc. To make this statement stand on its feet, it should be necesssary to dive into the actual statistcics of the data. It could have been a case where hours of American music was being played in the most busy time of the day in the program. The direct correlation between number of hours to declivity of the fan base seems errant.
Secondly, the business manager mentions a critc report from "recent" months from "many" long-term supporters. Such a statement cannot provide any insight to an actual critc that companies should get. If recent could have implied for a single month and many would imply 20 similar minded people and not an extended pool of critics, the assertion can have no support. The un-American bias along with this also hampers the assertion as no incisive nature of this word has been mentioned. If the program plays music of the same type but American folk adds few patriotic works and jingoists did listen to them and reviewed, the statement does not add any value to the conclusion attained.
Adding to the argument of improper sample space, the credibilty of the local news paper warrants my incredulity. If the article is written by one of the "many" long-term suppoters that the business manager mentions, the flawed statement cannot be used for arriving at a concluison. Also, the paper could also be a review-supported low reach newspaper which can be highly critcized for its smaller pool of study. The paper might fawn a certain sector of people holding particular views regarding the music being aired by the station.
Lastly, the business manager wants to forestall an adverse publicity but does no research upon the actual implementation of this idea through number crunching. The proposal does not incorporate the survey that renders adverse publicity. The company seems to cater to many wants as they did play three different genres of music and nothing supports the manager's statement regarding the loss of publicity except certain arbitrary views and articles which have yet to be verified. If the company decides to continue with the current program, the loss of additonal supporters which the manager mentions has no statistical backing. There is also a possibilty in the last sentence itself which says that their could be a net increase in total supporters as well.
In conclusion, I would like to state that the conclusion seems to precipitated without mathematical research being done. Lack of sheer numbers and reviews from unverified sources seem to cloud the business manager's thought process and fixate on a hasty correlation between loss of listeners to amount of time given to American music in comparison to the Latino and world music.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-02 | farhadmoqimi | 55 | view |
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| 2019-02-27 | nehaudeshi | 43 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 546 350
No. of Characters: 2676 1500
No. of Different Words: 269 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.834 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.901 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.572 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 190 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 145 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.123 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.294 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 78, Rule ID: NEWS_PAPER[1]
Message: Did you mean 'newspaper'? This word sequence is usually spelled together.
Suggestion: newspaper
...mple space, the credibilty of the local news paper warrants my incredulity. If the article...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 353, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...enres of music and nothing supports the managers statement regarding the loss of publici...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, lastly, regarding, second, secondly, so, well, in conclusion, speaking about, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2766.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 546.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.06593406593 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83390555256 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76478411137 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 274.0 204.123752495 134% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.501831501832 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 848.7 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.902246902 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.727272727 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8181818182 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.86363636364 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.189274405965 0.218282227539 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0538923283883 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0393478253808 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100156151167 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0198806242269 0.0628817314937 32% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.36 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 122.0 98.500998004 124% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.