"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country."
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.
In this argument, the author claims that Happy Pancake House should replace Butter by margarine to the rest of the country as it can save more money for the restaurant. However, the argument does not make a cogent case and is rife with hole and assumptions. Thus, it is not strong enough to lead to the conclusion that restaurants should replace butter my margarine.
First of all, the author cites a result from a survey that only 2% of customer complains about this replacement. However, the author falsely assumes that 2% of customer complain rates is a small number. It is entirely possible that Happy Pancake House is a well-known chain store and 2% of customers may be more than thousands of people. In addition, even if this 2 % complain rates is relatively small, it does not necessarily mean that people who didn’t make an official complain welcome the replacement of butter by margarine. Furthermore, the author argues that severs in Happy Pancake House said few customers complain when they are given margarine other than butter. However, this argument relies on the assumption that servers tell the truth. It may be the case that these servers lie about the number of customers in their restaurants making complains in order to show the quality of the restaurant. Thus, without given the exact number of customers who made complaints and prove the authenticity of these servers’ words, we cannot conclude that replacing butter by margarine is a good idea and can be generalized across the country.
In fact, this is not the only place the author makes such an assumption. In the argument, the author assumes too hastily that customers didn’t make complaints are attributable to either they cannot distinguish butter and margarine, or they use ‘butter’ to refer to both butter and margarine. There is likely a myriad of other reasons that lead customers didn’t make complaints. For instance, it might because customers are just indolence to point out this replacement or even don’t know where to make their complaints. In addition, didn’t make complaints does not necessarily mean that they welcome this replacement. Thus, the author needs to provide more evidence to rule out these possibilities.
Even if the majority of customers accept the idea that replacing the butter by margarine, it would not necessarily be profitable as a result. Profitability is a function of both revenue and expense. It is entirely possible that after they change butter to margarine, fewer customers decide to visit this restaurant, which causes the restaurant to have less revenue. In addition, we are not sure whether margarine will have any potential side effect for customers health compared to butter. If it has some side effects, this replacement behavior will extremely harm restaurant’s reputation and loss a great number of customers. Without weighing revenue against expenses, the argument’s conclusion is premature at best.
In fact, even all assumptions authors made for this restaurant is tenable, the author also too hastily assumes that the success of Happy Pancake House in the southwestern United States can popularize in the whole nation. It is entirely possible that customers in the Northeastern United States are more critics about this issue and won’t visit this chain restaurant anymore. Or perhaps the price of butter in the Southeastern United States is even lower than margarine, which becomes meaningless to replace butter by margarine. Without accounting for such possibilities, the author cannot convince me that replacing butter by margarine is cost-saving and can extend throughout the country.
In conclusion, the argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To strengthen it, the argument’s proponent must provide more data for the survey he mentioned and must convince me that the customers who didn’t make complaints are because they cannot distinguish butter and margarine. Also, to better the argument’s claim that extends this replacement throughout the country, I would need to know more about the customers' preference and provincial conditions in the other part of the country.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-09 | wo00_hi | 55 | view |
| 2019-11-21 | Yann | 43 | view |
| 2019-10-29 | bmartinurcelay | 63 | view |
| 2019-10-29 | FaylEAVE0920 | 55 | view |
| 2019-10-28 | sushil koirala | 50 | view |
- The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment complex to its manager.“One month ago, all the showerheads in the rest three buildings of the Sunnyside Towers complex were modified to restrict maximum water flow to on 55
- "Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy wit 55
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 30 15
No. of Words: 668 350
No. of Characters: 3366 1500
No. of Different Words: 254 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.084 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.039 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.758 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 251 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 183 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 133 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 101 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.267 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.25 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.495 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 420, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'customers'' or 'customer's'?
Suggestion: customers'; customer's
...ry, I would need to know more about the customers preference and provincial conditions in...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, thus, well, for instance, in addition, in conclusion, in fact, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 27.0 13.6137724551 198% => OK
Pronoun: 63.0 28.8173652695 219% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3530.0 2260.96107784 156% => OK
No of words: 661.0 441.139720559 150% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.34039334342 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.07049507093 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.02476671498 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 271.0 204.123752495 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.409984871407 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1102.5 705.55239521 156% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 14.0 4.96107784431 282% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 14.0 4.22255489022 332% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 30.0 19.7664670659 152% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.5858029003 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.666666667 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0333333333 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.9 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.18716968331 0.218282227539 86% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.056493127819 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0397846587704 0.0701772020484 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.111690862597 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0370394254344 0.0628817314937 59% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.69 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.