143. The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview.
"When the Grandview Symphony was established ten years ago, the city of Grandview agreed to provide the symphony with annual funding until the symphony became self-sustaining. Two years ago, the symphony hired an internationally known conductor, who has been able to attract high-profile guest musicians to perform with the symphony. Since then, private contributions to the symphony have tripled and attendance at the symphony's outdoor summer concert series has reached record highs. Now that the symphony has succeeded in finding an audience, the city can eliminate its funding of the symphony."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the memo, the writer recommends that the city should reduce its funding of the symphony because the symphony has succeeded in getting an audience. What underlies such a recommendation is the assumption that the symphony has become self-sustaining. To support his/her suggestion, the writer uses a series of evidence to demonstrate that the symphony can self-sustaining with the help of private contribution and so on. While this recommendation might be beneficial to some extent, the reasoning of this argument is unconvincing due to several unsubstantiated assumptions which, if proven unwarranted, will seriously challenge the author’s recommendation.
First of all, the author’s recommendation relies heavily on the assumption that the symphony can make more profit. But we do not know what is the “self-sustaining”. If it turns out that the symphony has a good balance between profit and loss, then the author’s recommendation is unwarranted because we could not make a good balance without funding of the city of Grandview. Moreover, we cannot decide whether self-sustaining only depends on the number of concerts and the private contribution.
In addition, by stating that conductor has been able to attract more high-profile guest musicians to perform with the symphony, the author presents an unstated assumption that such high-profile guest musician will have no difficulty attracting local citizen in Grandview and the symphony can make the profit from it. However, the assumption is potentially problematic because we are not informed of the exact number of attendance figure. Nor do we know there has a great balance between musician fee and the symphony revenue. More specifically. We need to know the cost of inviting these musicians. If it turns out that the cost of inviting musicians outweighs the income from selling tickets, then symphony still need the funding of city of Grandview. So the author’s recommendation is clearly weakened.
Likewise, the author unfairly assumes that private contribution and the income of concert can make more profit. So we also need to consider the balance between cost and income from selling tickets. If it turns out that the result is similar to the abovementioned result, then we should reconsider the validity of author’s recommendation. We also need especially consider the private contribution. While the private contributions have increased a lot, we cannot predict that such investment situation will continue in the future. If the private investment reduced due to the development of the private company, then we even cannot lose the funding of city of Grandview because we have lost some private investment. So, the recommendation in argument will be little more than writer’s wishful thinking.
To summarize, while it is reasonable to claim that the city of Grandview can limit the funding of symphony at first glance, whether or not we should implement the writer’s recommendation depends greatly on the validity of the assumptions mentioned above. If these assumptions prove unwarranted, then the recommendation will be little more than the writer’s wishful thinking.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
Don't repeat phrases like: 'turn out'
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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: 24 15
No. of Words: 490 350
No. of Characters: 2596 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.705 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.298 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.151 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 200 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 167 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.417 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.037 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.792 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.503 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.203 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 125, 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
...he funding of symphony at first glance, whether or not we should implement the writer's r...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, likewise, moreover, so, still, then, while, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 35.0 16.3942115768 213% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2705.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 489.0 441.139720559 111% => OK
Chars per words: 5.53169734151 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70248278971 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.47889486862 2.78398813304 125% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.41308793456 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 840.6 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 69.7907089487 57.8364921388 121% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.608695652 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.2608695652 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.34782608696 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.207726745994 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0665080545593 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0708391122002 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.145091109688 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0471962102424 0.0628817314937 75% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.79 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.5 12.3882235529 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.