Assignment task: The Gunning Fog Index was developed in 1952 by Robert Gunning, a textbook publisher. Gunning observed that high school graduates were not able to read much of what was written in newspapers and business documents. He determined that the reason for their inability to read such material was the writing. He felt that many of the texts in newspapers and business documents were unnecessarily complex.
The Gunning Fog Index calculates the complexity of passages of text using an algorithm. For more information on how the index calculates the text, see the following websites:
The Gunning Fog Index: A Useful Tool for Targeting an Article to an Audience
The Gunning Fog Index (or FOG) Readability Formula
For an example, please copy the following paragraph and paste it into the text box at this link: Gunning Fog Index:
With the explosion of IoT, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of devices that fall under the category of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Such technology might include implantable devices for patients and electronic office records for doctors' offices, among others. As with the Internet of Things (IoT), IoMT devices represent significant risks to privacy and security. Such risks could include compromising information on a patient's health history and medication. They could include hacking into a doctor's office records. They could include tampering with a patient's device that is connected to the person's body. Overall, IoMT includes a myriad of applications and technologies that render cyberbreaches possible. The risks associated with IoMT warrant significant steps taken by both professionals in the medical field and patients, as they involve many ethical and legal concerns. Moreover, the risks have resulted in promising technologies that can circumvent hackers' attempts.
Gunning concluded that a piece of text should have a fog index of less than 12 in order to be readable to a wide audience.
What was the fog index of the paragraph above? Please give at least two reasons for its score, based on your understanding of how the Gunning Fog Index calculates the level of complexity.
Insert your own piece of writing into the text box. You don't have to share your fog index here in this discussion topic. However, please write a few sentences on your impression of the Gunning Fog Index. Do you think it is a valid method of determining the complexity of a piece of text?
Feel free to use the Gunning Fog Index for your writing both in this class and in other classes.