The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview. "It is time for the city of Grandview to stop funding the Grandview Symphony Orchestra. It is true that the symphony struggled financially for many years, but last year private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent and attendance at the symphony's concerts-in-the-park series doubled. In addition, the symphony has just announced an increase in ticket prices for next year. For these reasons, we recommend that the city eliminate funding for the Grandview Symphony Orchestra from next year's budget. We predict that the symphony will flourish in the years to come even without funding from the city."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
At first glance, the prompt appears to belie a compelling argument against public funding for the Grandview Symphony Orchestra. However, further thought shows that the memo relies on presumptive assumptions and fallacious reasoning. Analysis is required on a granular level in order to make an informed financial decision.
To begin with, the costs may not outweigh the benefits. Often it makes more sense to spend money in the short run in order to yield higher returns in the long run. To illustrate, the Grandview Symphony Orchestra likely brings in tourism which brings new business to local commerce. With more funding, they will be able to produce more shows thus attracting out of town orchestra enthusiasts directly to local Grandview businesses. In this instance, it is beneficial to subsidize the orchestra's costs in order to maintain high production volumes. Without more information regarding tourism and the Grandview Symphony Orchestra, the author's claims are presumptive.
Furthermore, the memo claims that the symphony will flourish in years to come even without city funding. As mentioned in the previous example, no business is safe to the detriment of rising costs. Even if inflation is not a current concern for the Grandview Symphony Orchestra, it will likely be one in the future. Regardless, the author does not elaborate nor provide a cogent argument as to why he/she is confident in their future success. Basing a large funding decision off of one year's attendance is an unjustifiable assumption.
Additionally, the writers points to increased private donations, attendendance and ticket prices implying they have increased profits. This may indicate increased profits for the Grandview Symphony Orchesta, but we do not know without looking at their audited accounting documents. For instance, the costs of goods and services may have risen at faster rate due to inflation. Perhaps donations increased in desperation to keep the production afloat, and ticket prices were raised out of necessity. Inflation can cause damaging losses to unprepared businesses, and it is likely that the rise in ticket prices and private donations are justified. A recent Wall Street Journal article examined the increased number of small business solvencies and concluded that over 60% of shut downs were attributed to the rising costs of goods. Without officially knowing whether or not the Grandview Symphony Orchestra is turning a profit, it is irrational to base a decision regarding funding on the little information we know.
In summary, the prompt flashes statistics that do not provide insights into the true nature of the Grandview Symphony Orchestra's business strength. The writer may be correct in their future success and is right to suggest that the city should eliminate funding. But we simply do not know enough to make an informed decision off what is presented.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-03-13 | lebronjames | 58 | view |
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- Practice test 16
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 358, Rule ID: OUT_OF_PLACE[1]
Message: Did you mean 'out-of-town'?
Suggestion: out-of-town
...e to produce more shows thus attracting out of town orchestra enthusiasts directly to local...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 857, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...ts of goods. Without officially knowing whether or not the Grandview Symphony Orchestra is tur...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 24, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'flashes'' or 'flash's'?
Suggestion: flashes'; flash's
...ion we know. In summary, the prompt flashes statistics that do not provide insights...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, however, if, look, may, regarding, so, thus, as to, for instance, in summary, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2441.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 456.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.35307017544 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62105577807 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84731812254 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.524122807018 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 748.8 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 29.4978518521 57.8364921388 51% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 101.708333333 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.0 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.83333333333 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.268472496551 0.218282227539 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0709581397093 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0815092227858 0.0701772020484 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.154579595393 0.128457276422 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0379029247173 0.0628817314937 60% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.3 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.75 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.18 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 133.0 98.500998004 135% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.0 12.3882235529 48% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.