Argument Type
The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
"According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
One of the first questions that need to be answered before evaluating the argument is how few is "fewer" in the sentence "[..] fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies...". Is the decrement lower enough to warrant the increased spending for the subsequent advertisments? On a same not, it should also be verified that the percentage by which positive reviews have increased is a good number. A good percentage should be decided relative to the standard deviation that the number has shown in past decade or so. It could also happen that the positive reviews have increased for all the movies, not just that of Super Screen Company, and is associated with a factor not relevant to the actual improvement in quality of their movies of the last year.
On to the more important gaps in the flow of logic, the author of the memo jumps to the conclusion that the reviews are not reaching the public from the premise that the reviews of the movies are good but still the viewers number has taken a dip. First assumption here is that the amount of good reviews is the reason why people turn up for a movie, which is not necessarily a case. This could happen when people weigh more on the topic of the story, or the popularity of the movie-cast among other things. If this is the case, the author's conclusion that public are not reading the good reviews of the movies could be false and still the dip in the number would be justified -- a flaw in the logic.
A second assumption here is that people even read the reviews of the movies presented to them through newspaper or other media. It could be the case that public is ignoring all the movie reviews by crtitics, and are instead relying on the word of their family and friends. In which case the whole subsequent argument falls apart, including the final conclusion of increasing the advertising budget.
An important assumption in the memo is that increasing advertisements would lead to public being more aware about the quality of the movies by the company. Although at first glance it seems to be logical, but it is not evident from the premise itself. It could be the case that people ignore advertisements of the movies, and forget about their content. In such a case, alternative ways to increase the awareness should be reflected upon, such as selling of movie merchanidise, etc.
The memo is riddled with different kind of assumptions, some very serious in nature. Ensuring that all the assumptions are valid one based on real data is a must for the final conclusions to be valid.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 139, Rule ID: DOUBLE_PUNCTUATION
Message: Two consecutive dots
Suggestion: .
...apos;fewer' in the sentence '[..] fewer people attended Super Screen-pro...
^^
Line 3, column 533, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... other things. If this is the case, the authors conclusion that public are not reading ...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 484, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...h as selling of movie merchanidise, etc. The memo is riddled with different kind...
^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'if', 'second', 'so', 'still', 'kind of', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.230303030303 0.25644967241 90% => OK
Verbs: 0.149494949495 0.15541462614 96% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0949494949495 0.0836205057962 114% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0424242424242 0.0520304965353 82% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0222222222222 0.0272364105082 82% => OK
Prepositions: 0.133333333333 0.125424944231 106% => OK
Participles: 0.0464646464646 0.0416121511921 112% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.73196591744 2.79052419416 98% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0222222222222 0.026700313972 83% => OK
Particles: 0.0020202020202 0.001811407834 112% => OK
Determiners: 0.143434343434 0.113004496875 127% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0222222222222 0.0255425247493 87% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0161616161616 0.0127820249294 126% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2580.0 2731.13054187 94% => OK
No of words: 447.0 446.07635468 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.77181208054 6.12365571057 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59808378696 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.319910514541 0.378187486979 85% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.223713646532 0.287650121315 78% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.154362416107 0.208842608468 74% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.10514541387 0.135150697306 78% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73196591744 2.79052419416 98% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 207.018472906 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451901565996 0.469332199767 96% => OK
Word variations: 49.8751946742 52.1807786196 96% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 24.8333333333 23.2022227129 107% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.9482062144 57.7814097925 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.333333333 141.986410481 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8333333333 23.2022227129 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.5 0.724660767414 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 3.58251231527 84% => OK
Readability: 47.2046979866 51.9672348444 91% => OK
Elegance: 1.91509433962 1.8405768891 104% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.402743470423 0.441005458295 91% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.135077542899 0.135418324435 100% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0695629948913 0.0829849096947 84% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.650617272613 0.58762219726 111% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.116542713416 0.147661913831 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.188163176267 0.193483328276 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0713157736475 0.0970749176394 73% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.556258829736 0.42659136922 130% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.15367482607 0.0774707102158 198% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.274050603467 0.312017818177 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.06479768229 0.0698173142475 93% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.33743842365 144% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.87684729064 58% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.82512315271 41% => OK
Positive topic words: 12.0 6.46551724138 186% => OK
Negative topic words: 3.0 5.36822660099 56% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 17.0 14.657635468 116% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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: This is not the final score. 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.