The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a Relannian newspaper.
Industry analysts report that the number of dairy farms in Relanna has increased by 25 percent over the last decade. Also, recent innovations in milking technology make it possible for farmers to significantly increase the efficiency of the milking process, allowing them to collect more milk in less time with minimal human intervention. In fact, data from the Relannian Department of Agriculture indicate that labor costs at the majority of Relannian dairy farms are actually lower now than they were ten years ago. Despite increased efficiency and lower labor costs, a carton of cream — a dairy product made from milk — at the local food market costs twice as much as it did two years ago. The only explanation for this dramatic price increase is that farmers are inflating the price of cream to increase their profits.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
In the letter to the editor, it is stated that the farmers are deliberately inflating the price of a carton of cream available at the local food market to make profits. To bolster the author's claim, he provides three specific evidences - the number of diary farms in Relanna has increased by 25 percent, recent advaces in the milking technology improves the efficiency by manifold and there by less human intervention and lastly, the labors in Relanna are lower than it was ten years before. However, there could be alternative explanations that would possibly account for high cost of cream.
To begin with, the author claims that the number of dairy farms in Relanna has increased by 25 percent. However, though the increase may seem significant in the first glance, the author does not provide any information about the actual number. Perhaps, the number of diary farms in Relanna was less than 5 ten years ago and a 25 percent increase would make it 6 which implies that the number of diary farms has alomost remained static over the past decade. It is fallacious to blatantly consider that this increase would have any substantial effect on the price of the cartoon. Moreover, the author asserts that the labour cost have reduced in the past ten years and again, the auther does not provide any information about by how much were the costs reduced or by what amount. Perhaps, the decrease in the labour costs is so inconsequential that the reduce does not have any impact on the costs incurred for making the cream. If either of the alternate explanations have merit, the author's argument will be significantly weakend.
Moreover, the author does not explicitly mention if the local farmers are using advanced milking technology. It could very well be the case that the local farmers have not yet upgraded to the recent technologly or they have been not using any technology to aid them in the first place. Since the farmers generally netiher make hefty profits nor are they aware of better ROI(Return on Investments) by using advanced technology, they are generally reluctant in advocating the us of technology. And hence, though the author argues that newer milking technology reduces the depency on man power, perhaps the farmers in Relanna have not yet adopted such technology which make them incur the same costs as they did in the past. If this is the scenario in Relanna, the aurthor's argument does not hold water.
Finally, the author spuriously assumes that there are no factors other than what are mentioned in the argument that effect the price of the cream. Perhaps the farmers have been made aware of the blights of the cattle recently and they have to invest in maintaining good health of their cattle. Or may be there has been significant increase in the price of the fodder over the past years which prohibits them from making the cream at low costs. If either of the cases turns out be true, they would significantly weaken the author's claim that the local farmers are increasing the price of the cream to gain profits.
To recapitulate, one can see that there are quite a few alternate explanations that would justify the high cost of the cream in the local food market and suggest contrary to the author's conlcusion.
Moreover, it is not explicitly stated if the farmers in Relanna use milking technology. Only if the farmers us the miliking technology will they get exonerated from huge investement on their diary farms.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 588 350
No. of Characters: 2810 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.924 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.779 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.489 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 137 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.727 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.974 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.351 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.576 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.152 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 381, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...logy improves the efficiency by manifold and there by less human intervention and...
^^
Line 3, column 849, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...labour costs is so inconsequential that the reduce does not have any impact on the costs i...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 985, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... alternate explanations have merit, the authors argument will be significantly weakend....
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, hence, however, if, lastly, may, moreover, so, well, to begin with, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2876.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 588.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 4.89115646259 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9242980521 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5499017656 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 244.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.414965986395 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 897.3 705.55239521 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.7099186979 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.727272727 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.7272727273 23.324526521 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.63636363636 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.180812383962 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0609652300625 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0703512375156 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0943530211769 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0679057926467 0.0628817314937 108% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.38 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.23 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.5 12.3882235529 157% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.