The following appeared in a letter from a firm providing investment advice to a client.
"Homes in the northeastern United States, where winters are typically cold, have traditionally used oil as their major fuel for heating. Last year that region experienced twenty days with below-average temperatures, and local weather forecasters throughout the region predict that this weather pattern will continue for several more years. Furthermore, many new homes have been built in this region during the past year. Because of these developments, we predict an increased demand for heating oil and recommend investment in Consolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retail sale of home heating oil."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the passage, the author recommends investing in Consolidated Industries, because of the prediction of increasing demand for heating oil. To support his/her claim, the author cites the extremely cold weather in recent years together with local weather forecasts. Furthermore, he/she also uses a series of evidence to demonstrate a drastic increase of home building in this area. Quite convincing though such recommendation appears at first glance, a closer scrutiny reveals that the conclusion lacks crucial supports and therefore we should consider more evidence to help evaluate such recommendation.
To start off, we need more evidence to verify if the harsh climate condition will continue as the author's prediction. While the author shows local weather forecasters' prediction for the continual cold winter climate, no evidence serves to rule out the probability that such prophecy mayn't occur, considering unpredicability of the Earth's climatic system. Thus, extra evidence gains great significance to determine whether this area will be continually dominated by such extreme weather during the winter. If new evidence shows that such harsh weather is just a sort of temporal phenomenon, it is safe to claim that fuel demand for heating is unlikely to increase and his/her reasoning will be weakened. On the contrary, if new information discloses the opposite situation, his/her viewpoint will be lent more support to.
Furthermore, we also require additional evidence to ascertain whether new building houses will bring about increase of oil heating demand. First of all, while local residents may stay in their new house and go through the whole winter, we still need to check with new evidence about whether they would migrate to other places to escape from the inclement weather. If a great number of people would like to move to warmer places instead of keeping at their new house, the soaring demand of oil fuel is in great doubt and his/her reasoning will be rendered much less advisable. Second, we need to decide whether people would still stick to traditional oil heating and blindly ignore other new and more economic ways of house heating. If they will resort to solar heating which effectively avoid oil consumption, we are unconvinced that oil heating demand will increase accompanying with the construction of new houses.
Last but not least, despite the presence of all previous evidence, a more accurate evaluation of the author's recommendation requires further information. Specific evidence is required to evaluate whether Consodilated Industries could fully seize on such increasing requirements of oil fuel and make great profit out of it; that is to say, whether such company is running on a good track for its business so that investors could gain their expected financial benefits in the future. If the answer is positive, his/her recommendation will be strengthened. Otherwise, if the management team of this company is highly incompetent and even have severe corruption issues, or their employees don't have sufficient passion to make contribution to its development, we are reluctant to believe that investors can grasp with their expected profits.
In summary, the evidence cited by the author in the argument could not provide sufficiently conclusive information to make his/her argument compelling. As a result, we need more evidence to better evaluate such argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
The argument one may not be correct.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 543 350
No. of Characters: 2814 1500
No. of Different Words: 266 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.827 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.182 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.843 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 170 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 122 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.15 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.896 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.247 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 99, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... climate condition will continue as the authors prediction. While the author shows loca...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 156, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'forecasters'' or 'forecaster's'?
Suggestion: forecasters'; forecaster's
...n. While the author shows local weather forecasters prediction for the continual cold winte...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 102, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ence, a more accurate evaluation of the authors recommendation requires further informa...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 686, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...e corruption issues, or their employees dont have sufficient passion to make contrib...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, if, may, second, so, still, then, therefore, thus, while, in summary, sort of, as a result, first of all, on the contrary, that is to say
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 37.0 16.3942115768 226% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2882.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 534.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.39700374532 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80712388197 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9042329707 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 276.0 204.123752495 135% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.516853932584 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 899.1 705.55239521 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.8151216924 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.1 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.7 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.4 5.70786347227 147% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.126679380394 0.218282227539 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0413481201458 0.0743258471296 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0294849344951 0.0701772020484 42% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0694088390234 0.128457276422 54% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0314141839113 0.0628817314937 50% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.4 14.3799401198 121% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.34 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.33 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 149.0 98.500998004 151% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: 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.