The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
"Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest control services at our warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years in Palm City, continued to service our warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage. Even though the price charged by Fly-Away is considerably lower, our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services."
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.
The following argument is flawed for many reasons. Mainly, the argument is based off the unwarranted assumption that the warehouses in Palm city and Wintervale are the same. This assumption renders its main conclusion that Buzzoff will save their company money invalid.
The argument assumes both warehouses had a similar amount of food, however this may be false. The argument states that in Palm City 20,000 dollars’ worth had been destroyed, whereas in Wintervale only 10,000 dollars were destroyed- assuming more food in Palm City had been demolished. This assumption is not justified however because if the warehouse in Palm City had $100,000 worth of food and only $20,000 had pest damage, that would lead to only 20% being destroyed. On the other hand, in Wintervale if they had $20,000 worth of food and $10,000 worth having pest damage, it would lead to 50% damage and Buzzoff would not save the company more money. Had the argument provided information regarding the initial value of food in the warehouse, a better judgement of savings could be made. And even then the argument would have to further prove how much of the food in each warehouse is susceptible to pest damage.
The argument also assumes that the Palm City environment is similar to Wintervale, however these cities could differ in many ways. Mainly, the environments could differ in the aspect of their weather. Say Palm City is a very hot and humid city, it would then be likely that they are prone to more pests. This would lead to a higher percentage of their food being damaged by pests. On the contrary, if Wintervale is very cold and dry there would be less pests and consequently less food being damaged. If the argument were to state the similarity of weather conditions the argument could be strengthened, at that point the argument would further have to prove the number of pests were also similar.
The argument as well uses ambiguous terms like considerably lower. These terms do not give a clear picture to lead to a strong argument. In the sense of the term considerably lower, Fly-Away could be $10,000 lower than Buzzoff or they could be $500 lower. Had the argument stated the official costs of each service, and the argument combined this cost compared to the percent of food damage then the argument could be reinforced.
This argument had many flaws including not stating the percentage of food that was damaged, the similarity of cities, and the cost of each service. Stating these facts could have strengthened the argument and lead to a clear decision if Buzzoff were to save their company money.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 442 350
No. of Characters: 2104 1500
No. of Different Words: 174 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.585 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.76 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.43 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.048 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.448 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.558 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.136 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 449, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun pests is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...ale is very cold and dry there would be less pests and consequently less food being ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, consequently, however, if, may, regarding, so, then, well, whereas, in conclusion, on the contrary, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2171.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 442.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91176470588 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58517132086 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53131732752 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.423076923077 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 657.0 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.1324490757 57.8364921388 75% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.380952381 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0476190476 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.85714285714 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.108589722476 0.218282227539 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0417572293482 0.0743258471296 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0320176727064 0.0701772020484 46% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0663195387154 0.128457276422 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0286445681398 0.0628817314937 46% => 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: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.5 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 79.0 98.500998004 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.