The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."
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.
A letter from a store owner in Central Plaza to the editor of a publication, asserts that if skateboarding is prohibited customers would be more inclined to start shopping at Central Plaza again. The evidence used to support this solution is an increase in skateboarding popularity over the last two years, decreased sales over the last two years, and increased vandalism and litter. A cursory glance at this evidence doesn’t prove this proposal will solve the problem and there are a three more questions that need to be answered.
First of all, has it been proven that the skateboarders are vandalizing and littering in the mall? Can we assume that skateboarders vandalize and litter more than other patrons of the mall? Since there hasn’t been evidence presented to identify who is vandalizing and littering in the mall, one can assume that mall patrons that aren’t skateboarders are equally capable of littering and vandalizing. Until the store owner can provide data to prove who the vandals and patrons who litter this remains a logical fallacy.
Secondly, are we sure the skateboarders aren’t paying customers? Skateboarders who go to the mall may very well be part of the few paying customers the mall still has. If those customers are prohibited from using the mall to skateboard, the store owners may find that they are losing more revenue.
Lastly, is there really a correlation between the popularity of skateboarding and the decline in sales at Central Plaza? One would think that there are much more relevant trends and reasons for a decline in sales, such as online shopping, residents moving to other areas, or old patrons shopping in other malls. One way for store owners to increase sales is to diversify their sales strategy by using social media and other platforms. They may find that they are able to make up for losses using these strategies and no longer focus on prohibiting skateboarders in the mall.
In conclusion, the argument is not supported well by the evidence given. To get a clearer picture of how prohibiting skateboarders will help sales, there should be more data collected and compared with data from at least 3 years when sales were better. This data will show a correlation, if any, and give credence to the recommendation.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-15 | savikx | 77 | view |
| 2020-01-06 | stevewang1007 | 66 | view |
| 2019-12-23 | Pranjil | 75 | view |
| 2019-12-05 | sagar2052 | 69 | view |
| 2019-12-04 | Md. Kawsar Ahmed | 46 | view |
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 384 350
No. of Characters: 1845 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.427 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.805 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.745 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 113 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.588 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.499 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.589 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, if, lastly, may, really, second, secondly, so, still, well, at least, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1919.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 380.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.05 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41515443553 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.871363773 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.489473684211 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 607.5 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.2447400831 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.882352941 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3529411765 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.64705882353 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.194662450934 0.218282227539 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0673455608798 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0845670472044 0.0701772020484 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.108269739026 0.128457276422 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0883674439487 0.0628817314937 141% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.31 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.