following memo was circulated by the management team of a retail company:
“We are very pleased to announce the relocation of our inventory, which had been located in four different warehouses throughout the country, to a single new warehouse near Company headquarters in Boston. This consolidated location will cut the company’s expenses for warehouse rent in half. As a result we expect our monthly profitability to go up by this amount.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument's conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.
In the argument presented above, the author points out that the consolidation of the company's inventory will cut company's warehouse expenses in half and also increase the monthly profitability. Though in the first glance, the argument does seem air tight, but upon closer inspection, the author seems to have failed to address certain key questions that could make or break the argument. In reaching the final conclusion, the author also makes certain far fetched assumptions which might need reconsideration.
First of all, the author says that consolidating the 4 inventories into 1 would cut company's expenses for warehouse in half. This assumes that the cost of the new and bigger warehouse is half of the total expense of the 4 warehouses. Nothing in the argument suggests that this will be the case. It may be that the cost of the newer and bigger warehouse might be equal or greater than half of the total cost of the existing 4 warehouses,, in which case, the author's argument breaks down. The old warehouses could be in an area where the cost of land is low as compared to the land where the consolidated warehouse is. Or it can be the other way round. In any case, we cannot be certain, that this move will cut the company's expense for warehouse in half.
Secondly, the author claims that as a result of this consolidation, the monthly profitability would go up. The argument does have some basis to support this claim, but that too is a bit far fetched. Since, profit equals costs minus the revenue, we cannot comment on the profit unless we have information on both costs and revenue. The movement of inventory from 4 locations to 1 would certainly involve additional costs, so this casts serious doubts on the claim that profitability would certainly increase. Additionally, even if we assume that all the inventory from the 4 locations is retained, there is no evidence in the argument that supports the claim for increased revenues. Even if costs were reduced and the revenue were increased, we do not have any idea about their relative amounts, hence, we cannot definitely conclude that profitability would increase as a result of the consolidation of the inventory.
Overall the author makes a claim that is unsubstantiated. The author fails to provide necessary information that support his claim. Also, the author makes certain assumptions in his logic that are questionable. In order to makes author's claim more logically sound, more information is required, and those pieces of information have already been discussed in the paragraphs above.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-05-10 | priyankgaur | 65 | view |
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 429 350
No. of Characters: 2093 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.551 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.879 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.786 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.45 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.657 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.524 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.131 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 436, Rule ID: DOUBLE_PUNCTUATION
Message: Two consecutive commas
Suggestion: ,
... total cost of the existing 4 warehouses,, in which case, the authors argument bre...
^^
Line 3, column 458, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...sting 4 warehouses,, in which case, the authors argument breaks down. The old warehouse...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, if, may, second, secondly, so, as a result, first of all, in any case
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2144.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 429.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.99766899767 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55107846309 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8720200166 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.473193473193 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 670.5 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.2845897047 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.2 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.45 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.7 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
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: 0.0827986694376 0.218282227539 38% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0290567295489 0.0743258471296 39% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0348294954268 0.0701772020484 50% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0489389247272 0.128457276422 38% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0394028562434 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.72 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.99 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.