Writing essay revision
Yue Huang 02/23 LLD 100A Cristin Boyd
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF A PROFESSIONAL DOCUMENT
INTRODUCTION
The article I am analyzing is Careers for Numbers People, Stem, Silicon Valley & Beyond by
Bob Morand. This is a good text for me to analyze because this text can make my future
planning clearer. The text shows a lot of information about math-related jobs including salary
range and top employers. Most importantly, the text explains what each job needs to do with
many details. Therefore, I can plan my learning direction by understanding of the information.
The author met many people who enjoy math but are unsure what they want to do and have no
idea about their careers like me. Hence, in order to achieve his purpose of helping such people
find a future path, he wrote this paper and posted it on the Internet. Therefore, the intended
audience for the text is the people who are not sure about the future but want to find a job. I
consider that he wants the reader to think what they are interested in around those fields he
mentioned in the paper and start learning other specialties depending on which career they are
going to do after they read this article. I will elaborate on my analysis of this paper about the
rhetorical strategies which are ethos, logos, exemplification, definition and comparison.
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ANALYSIS OF RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
Rhetorical Appeals
Ethos
In this article, Ethos is used to convince audiences of the author’s credibility or character as I
learned in class. According to the introduction about the author on the website, we can know that
the author is president and managing partner DW Simpson, an executive recruiting firm
specializing in the placement of Actuaries and Analytics professionals, and he frequently speaks
at actuarial clubs/affiliations throughout the United States and Europe on the subject of actuarial
employment trends, sharing how employees can attract actuarial talent to their companies. As a
math major student, I know that a lot of people who are mathematics major choose to make
actuaries as their own career after graduation, among all mathematics-related careers. In this
case, the author used ethos by introducing his background and experience to make him credible.
Logos
The rhetorical appeal the author used is logos. From the Reading Packet, “Logos, the appeal to
logic, means to convince by use of logic or reason”. To use logos would be to cite facts and
statistics, and there are a lot of statistics about median salaries for different careers like
accountant or median starting salaries of bachelor’s and master’s for various careers like
Computer Engineering/Information. Therefore, the connection between example and strategy is
that the existence of such examples demonstrates the use of the logos strategy. Due to the
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application of logos, the author is able to convince the audiences who are numbers people and
unsure what they want to do. And in this case, the strategy can contribute to accomplishment of
the author’s purpose of convincing the reader.
Development of Ideas
Exemplification
First of all, the author often use exemplification as a method to gain credibility in his article. It
can show the details of a complex problem in a way that’s easy for readers to understand. As we
can see from the paragraph, “Stacking Numbers Careers Against Others”, the author gives us a
lot of information about careers with their typical degree and median salary to explain his
opinion, “Graduates with STEM-related degrees are in high demand today and there are a lot of
jobs available that pay well. For example, for accountant, the typical degree is bachelor’s degree
in accounting and the median salary is $63550.” Similarly, in another paragraph, “Top Paying
Numbers Jobs in Silicon Valley”, the author also shows a few high-paying numbers jobs that can
be found in Silicon Valley such as algorithms engineer, data scientist and so on. Through these
examples, he provides a few paths for the readers to choose. When faced with specific options,
the people who do not know what to do can pick one according to their interests. So, in this case,
they would be clearer about their future than before.
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Definition
Secondly, the author tells us what the “certain commonalities” of people who work with numbers
may possess are by definition. Definition can deeply examine a word or a concept as we actually
use and understand it. In the first paragraph of this paper, “Is a Career in Numbers Right for
You?”, the author defines the certain commonalities as many traits including a facility for
reasoning and reverse reasoning, “an understanding of spatial, quantitative and abstract
relationships and an ability to employ numbers and mathematics with confidence.” The author
explained the commonalities to the reader and makes them know more about themselves if their
lives are related to number or mathematics. The definition makes the audience easier to figure
out their abilities and strengthen their confidence to continue learning based on what they know
about themselves.
Comparison
Last but not least, comparison is also an important rhetorical strategy for this paper. The author
makes use of comparison to illustrate, “the people who work with numbers translates to higher
salaries and earning a graduate degree usually means higher salaries and more upward mobility.”
In the paragraph, “Stacking Numbers Careers Against Others”, the author compares careers that
require a math or a math-related degree with those that do not such as actuary and emergency
medical technician, computer scientist and human resources specialist. By the chart comparing
numbers careers and other careers, it is easy to know what the point the author wants to express
is that the people who work with number have higher salaries. And in another paragraph, “Does
A Master’s Degree Pay Off?”, there is a list of numbers-related careers where a master’s degree
is most likely to have a positive impact at the beginning of a career. As we can see, the salary of
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master’s at the beginning is higher than the salary of bachelor’s among these careers like
accounting/computer and electronics manufacturing. But it depends on the specific profession
rather than overall. The author’s purpose is that we need to determine what career we want to
pursue before considering whether to gain a master’s degree. In summary, comparison can make
drawing a conclusion from data easier, meanwhile, it also makes the conclusion more convincing
basing on the data used for comparison.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, I analyzed this article rhetorical appeals and the strategies. For the appeals, logos is
used since the author displays much data about careers such as median salary. For the strategies,
exemplification, definition and comparison are applied to assist the author in explaining his
opinions about the numbers people and are helpful to the reader to understand the point of view
from the author. I think the most successful strategy for the author’s intended audience and
purpose is the comparison because the author compares the median salaries of numbers careers
and the median salaries of other careers. The intended audience can understand the author’s
opinion that the salary of numbers careers is usually higher. Finally, the change I would
recommend to better achieve his purpose is using more comparison. Because I think comparison
is pretty straightforward to show the difference between two things, and it can make the reader
easier to understand that there are a lot of careers in numbers and the careers are usually well
paid.
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