In the last 10 years, the number of patrons to the local library has decreased by a factor of 5, while during that time the number of purchases of electronic books has increased by a factor of 10. The director of the library believes that the cause of the decrease in patrons is due to the library not advertising as effectively as do online merchants that sell electronic books. Therefore, the library should double the amount of money that it spends on advertising, so that more patrons will frequent the library.
The argument made by the passage has a lot of holes in it since several questions remain unanswered. The passage makes no mention of surveys on why people have stopped going to the library, and assumes they have stopped going due to ineffective advertising from the library. It mentions the library's director, but gives no indication that he or she is a reliable authority or was quoted correctly. It also assumes that increased spending on advertising will increase the effectiveness of advertising, which is not at all guaranteed.
People stop going to libraries for many different reasons. Many former patrons may prefer to buy e-books rather than borrow books. If that were the case, then the cause of the library's problem would not be one of advertising, but one of adapting to patrons' preferences. In that case increased spending on advertising would be a waste of money.
The author of the passage bases his argument on the fact that the director of the library said that the cause of the decrease in number of patrons is due to ineffective advertising. Though the director of the library is expected to be a reliable authority on the library's problems, there is no guarantee of that expectation being realistic. The advent of e-books has brought about a new age, one with which the director of the library may be unfamiliar. Even if the director is familiar with this new age and did mention something about ineffective advertising, there's the chance that the director was misquoted and he or she really meant to say that ineffective advertising is a cause or a possible cause. If the director was unfamiliar with e-books or was misquoted, then the passage has no support from an authority and is thoroughly weakened.
The passage also assumes that increased spending will automatically increase the quality of advertising. This has been proven false in many cases, one of which is GoDaddy's super bowl ad. GoDaddy spent hundreds of thousands to put a modified copy of Budweiser's puppy ad on the super bowl jumbotron, but since the audience found the ad's content morally repugnant, GoDaddy ended up becoming well known for the wrong reason. Similarly, the library's increased spending has no guarantee of increasing advertising effectiveness.
The passage may have some merit if the director is a reliable authority. Suppose ineffective advertising really is the root cause of patrons leaving, and suppose the library has a concrete, fool-proof plan on increasing spending to boost advertising effectiveness. Even under these ideal conditions, we run into the problem of state funding. Most libraries are funded by the state, and thus are financially dependent. Financially dependent entities do not have as much autonomy in deciding where and how much to spend. The library may want to spend more on advertising, but if the state says no, there's little the library can do. The author's argument would thus be strongly enhanced if it included surveys on why patrons leave, proof of the director's credibility, reassurance that the library has a good plan for spending on advertising, and proof that the state would agree.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-29 | Noma Ahmad | 55 | view |
| 2019-05-03 | teheiniat | 83 | view |
| 2016-10-08 | sandeep.daiya45@gmail.com | 54 | view |
| 2016-09-16 | laukikkarnavat | 50 | view |
| 2016-09-11 | cheryl | 50 | view |
- In the last 10 years, the number of patrons to the local library has decreased by a factor of 5, while during that time the number of purchases of electronic books has increased by a factor of 10. The director of the library believes that the cause of the 68
- High schools should require all of their students to play a musical instrument. 62
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 36, Rule ID: NUMEROUS_DIFFERENT[1]
Message: Use simply 'many'.
Suggestion: many
.... People stop going to libraries for many different reasons. Many former patrons may prefer...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 15, column 588, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'says'' or 'say's'?
Suggestion: says'; say's
...d more on advertising, but if the state says no, there's little the library can...
^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'if', 'may', 'really', 'similarly', 'so', 'then', 'thus', 'well', 'in many cases']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.250379362671 0.25644967241 98% => OK
Verbs: 0.162367223065 0.15541462614 104% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0713201820941 0.0836205057962 85% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0364188163885 0.0520304965353 70% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0166919575114 0.0272364105082 61% => OK
Prepositions: 0.112291350531 0.125424944231 90% => OK
Participles: 0.040971168437 0.0416121511921 98% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.13157108366 2.79052419416 112% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0212443095599 0.026700313972 80% => OK
Particles: 0.00151745068285 0.001811407834 84% => OK
Determiners: 0.115326251897 0.113004496875 102% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0182094081942 0.0255425247493 71% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0121396054628 0.0127820249294 95% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3458.0 2731.13054187 127% => OK
No of words: 558.0 446.07635468 125% => OK
Chars per words: 6.19713261649 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.86024933743 4.57801047555 106% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.372759856631 0.378187486979 99% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.322580645161 0.287650121315 112% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.240143369176 0.208842608468 115% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.150537634409 0.135150697306 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.13157108366 2.79052419416 112% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 207.018472906 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.440860215054 0.469332199767 94% => OK
Word variations: 51.9333953837 52.1807786196 100% => OK
How many sentences: 28.0 20.039408867 140% => OK
Sentence length: 19.9285714286 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.806437354 57.7814097925 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.5 141.986410481 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.9285714286 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.392857142857 0.724660767414 54% => OK
Paragraphs: 9.0 5.14285714286 175% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 3.58251231527 56% => OK
Readability: 52.1866359447 51.9672348444 100% => OK
Elegance: 1.87323943662 1.8405768891 102% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.620490504558 0.441005458295 141% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.141829801192 0.135418324435 105% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.098150756636 0.0829849096947 118% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.603019467613 0.58762219726 103% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.214574826803 0.147661913831 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.244056527133 0.193483328276 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.163989930125 0.0970749176394 169% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.264299514816 0.42659136922 62% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.147179153299 0.0774707102158 190% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.308532175199 0.312017818177 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.196657236772 0.0698173142475 282% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.33743842365 120% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.87684729064 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 9.0 6.46551724138 139% => OK
Negative topic words: 10.0 5.36822660099 186% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 23.0 14.657635468 157% => OK
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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 to cover all aspects.