The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic Foods, a processor of frozen
foods:
“Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they become
more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day
service in 1970 to 20 cents for one-day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And
since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to
minimize costs and thus maximize profits.”
The argument puts forward a claim that costs of processing go down because as an organisation learns how to do things better, it becomes more efficient. It draws an example from a colour film processing industry and generalises the application of the results observed to the food industry -for a particular organisation. The argument concludes that with similar experience this organisation will be able to minimise its costs and thus, resulting in maximisation of its profits. The argument is flawed-It has made certain assumptions without proper justification and in fact, interpreted the data presented wrongly. This makes the argument unconvincing, incomplete and weak.
Firstly, the argument mentions that "as organisations learn how to do things better"- In this sentence without mentioning the definition of what "better" means, the reasoning is quite weak. For making the reader understand the reasoning better, the argument needs to mention that better in terms of market experience, or processing experience or managing the employees better etc. This will help the reader understand the factors behind making an organisation better and thus more efficient.
Secondly, if you compare the data presented for the colour film processing example in the argument -it says the cost fell from 50 cents for five days of service in 1970 to 2 cents for one day service in 1984. This means 10 cents/day(50/5) in 1970 to 20 cents/day(20/1) in 1984. Thus, if we observe the maths here, the cost per day has actually increased rather than going down! Thus, this example actually instead of strengthening the argument is actually making it weak. It would have been more suitable to use an example where cost/day or cost/unit has gone down with time as a strengthener to the argument.
Lastly, the argument makes a huge mistake by just applying the results from one organisation (from a different industry)-that too flawed to another organisation from a completely different industry. Even if we assume an example in which the cost/day has gone down with time, without understanding the factors like- Product, competition, market, economy, organisation etc. - we can't just blindly expect the results to be exactly same for Olympics Food. The best correlation can happen with an organisation similar to Olympics Food in a similar market, similar product lines etc. This will strengthen the argument much more as we will be able to draw an analogy between the two organisation better.
Thus, in the absence of the data sets and by using the wrong example, the argument currently sounds more like wishful thinking rather than a claim explained with substantiated examples and theory. As mentioned above the argument could be made much more strong by drawing an analogy from an organisation in the food industry(similar one) and with similar other relevant factors, one needs to keep in mind.
- The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic Foods, a processor of frozenfoods:“Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, they becomemore efficient. In color 35
- When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today. Therefore, the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. Such centralization would imp 89
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 470 350
No. of Characters: 2353 1500
No. of Different Words: 211 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.656 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.006 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.842 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 169 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.647 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.409 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.369 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.587 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.154 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 376, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...market, economy, organisation etc. - we cant just blindly expect the results to be e...
^^^^
Line 7, column 621, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[1]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
... will strengthen the argument much more as we will be able to draw an analogy betw...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, firstly, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, then, thus, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 8.0 19.6327345309 41% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 34.0 16.3942115768 207% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2446.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 463.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.28293736501 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63868890866 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03136779286 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481641468683 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 747.0 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.4928191102 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.736842105 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3684210526 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.15789473684 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.162844810648 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0614410992742 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0790415535557 0.0701772020484 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.102796934959 0.128457276422 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0567196625473 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => 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: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.03 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.