The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview.
"When the Grandview Symphony was established ten years ago, the city of Grandview agreed to provide the symphony with annual funding until the symphony became self-sustaining. Two years ago, the symphony hired an internationally known conductor, who has been able to attract high-profile guest musicians to perform with the symphony. Since then, private contributions to the symphony have tripled and attendance at the symphony's outdoor summer concert series has reached record highs. Now that the symphony has succeeded in finding an audience, the city can eliminate its funding of the symphony."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
Eliminating the city funding of the symphony could be a good conclusion from the facts. But the author makes a number of unsubstantiated assumptions about the audience which is reached by the symphony. Based on these assumptions, the author makes his/her bold proposal of retiring the funding of the symphony given by the city.
The author's first mistake is to assume because the private contributions has tripled, it shows that the symphony does not need the annual funding anymore. The author points out that after hiring an internationally known conductor, the private contributions increased. It does not imply; however, that the quantity of the contributions be the necessary. Perhaps, only one enterprise used to support the symphony with a small quantity and when the conductor was hired, this firm tripled the quantity. Nevertheless, this is still an small quantity which does not serve for paying all the needs of the symphony. If the author had given the exact quantity which is given to the symphony and this proves that the symphony does not need more funding for its needs, this had strengthened his/her argument.
Secondly, the author leaves many other unanswered questions. The author contends that the attendance at symphony's outdoor summer concert series reached record highs. However, it is not a right prove to demonstrate that the symphony became self-sustaining. What about the concerts in other seasons? Do they leave the same revenue than the outdoor summer concert series concerts? Perhaps, few people go to the other concerts and during that time the symphony needs the funding from the city. It is possible that the profits earned during summer do not cover all the needs for all the year. In addition, the argument does not mention the exact quantity of profits earned during summer. If the argument had presented the exact quantity of money reached by the symphony, and this implies that this will cover all the needs for all the year, the argument would be more persuasive.
Finally, the conclusion that the symphony has succeeded in finding audience at present, is unsupported. Even if we accept the two reasons given by the author, this argument mentions only information corresponding to the last two years. Then, this is a recent "picture" of the audience. What happened if next month, the conductor goes away and there is no more audience since then? It is necessary to have a record for more years to definitely show an audience which likes to go symphony concerts.
Because the author fails into creating a solid case which demonstrates that the symphony could be self-sustaining, the argument is not persuasive enough to conclude that the funding from the city must be retired.
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Comments
to go symphony concerts.
to go symphony concerts. -----> to go to / attend symphony concerts
Sentence: However, it is not a right prove to demonstrate that the symphony became self-sustaining.
Description: The fragment right prove to is rare
Suggestion: Possible agreement error: Replace prove with Noun.
Argument 1 -- OK
Argument 2 -- OK
Argument 3 -- not OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 449 350
No. of Characters: 2217 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.603 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.938 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.649 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.708 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.34 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.542 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.512 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5