The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.
"A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals."
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.
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The president of Bower Builders made undue assumptions about increasing the sales of his construction company based on the information taken from their competitor. However, before proceeding with these plans, the following three fallacies must be cleared.
A general consideration is, not everyone has the same need in case of buying houses. The argument assumes that the recent trend of high sales of houses with large bedrooms and kitchens might be an effective solution for increasing sales of the mentioned company. But neither everyone doesn’t have the same family size nor all of them have the same budget to buy large houses. For instance, a small family with a low budget may want small bedrooms and minimal kitchens. Again, some big families may find the need to have a dining room to enjoy meals together. So altering the size of all the homes might fulfill the need of a particular portion of the customer but a larger portion of them might be discouraged. As a result, sales may not increase as expected.
The next argument is, the president assumes taking all the measures like their opponents might help them boost the profits but he should also take his attention to the other facts too. Such as, the customers might be attracted to the building designs or quality assured by the competitor companies. Bowler Builders might lack in quality assurance in their structures . Thus before investigating fundamental problems, if the president rushes to the conclusion then sales might not change that much.
Another important point is, the president is making a parochial consideration about the future steps of the company because he is taking information of only a particular area and applying it to a broad space. For example, the people in that area where the other companies sold their houses, can be economically different from people in other areas. Again, only a few customer opinion have been taken about the dining room concept. Such a small survey doesn’t reflect the average opinion. As an example, financially much powerful people might find a dining room as a necessity .So taking actions based on an incomplete survey may not be fruitful in a larger extent.
The argument arises some suppositions which must be taken care of before stepping ahead with this plan. If these are not solved , the whole plan might not hold water and Bowler builders might face loss in their business.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 403 350
No. of Characters: 1959 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.48 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.861 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.563 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 98 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.15 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.532 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.287 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.084 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 105, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e of buying houses. The argument assumes that the recent trend of high sales of h...
^^
Line 3, column 366, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...in quality assurance in their structures . Thus before investigating fundamental p...
^^
Line 3, column 369, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...quality assurance in their structures . Thus before investigating fundamental proble...
^^^^
Line 4, column 576, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
... might find a dining room as a necessity .So taking actions based on an incomplete...
^^
Line 4, column 578, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: So
...ight find a dining room as a necessity .So taking actions based on an incomplete s...
^^
Line 5, column 127, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
... with this plan. If these are not solved , the whole plan might not hold water and...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, so, then, thus, for example, for instance, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.9520958084 162% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2011.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 401.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.01496259352 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47492842339 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63000139054 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.521197007481 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 628.2 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 0.0 4.96107784431 0% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.1507361207 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.55 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.05 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.6 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.121141654294 0.218282227539 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0334896551029 0.0743258471296 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0300243255944 0.0701772020484 43% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0646701605756 0.128457276422 50% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0389175806057 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.13 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.