The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author concludes the given argument by assuming the population count of both the headquarters are same, the total amount of working hours for the two new offices and quality of employees working at these two offices. The author neglects to consider these factors and thus recommends using Zeta rather than iAlpha. The author's recommendation is solely based on the fact of 30 percent less energy consumption at Zeta that at Alpha.
The author must state the precise difference in the population count working at Alpha and Zeta headquarters. This would impact the conclusion if there is a significantly uneven working population at the two new build offices. It might be possible that headquarters at Zeta uses only first two floors out of the total count and thus giving less electricity consumption as compared to Alpha which uses all the floors. Additionally, the number of working hours at both the headquarters must remain the same. Otherwise, it will be the major cause for the difference in energy consumption. The author must find out these statistics also.
The locality at which the two headquarters are present also matters. The electricity board present at these localities can be different and they charge different amount of charges per unit of electricity. Thus resulting in such a difference. It is possible that electricity provider in the region where Alpha is located give electricity at a costlier rate that the provider in Zeta region. It is also possible that headquarters at Zeta uses solar energy to source some amount of electricity which will lead to lesser energy consumption costs. Therefore, the author must know the source/provider of electricity at both the headquarters.
The skills of employees working at both the headquarters must also be mentioned. It will impact the maintenance costs of the two headquarters. If employees working at Zeta are more sophisticated and careful, the unnecessary extra maintenance costs which might be there at Alpha headquarters will be ceased at Zeta.
Thus, the author concludes by considering ideal cases for various other factors which might affect the conclusion. The author must state the above statistics to strengthen the argument to derive to the conclusion.
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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: 20 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1846 1500
No. of Different Words: 143 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.114 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.884 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.05 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.852 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.348 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.538 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 319, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...commends using Zeta rather than iAlpha. The authors recommendation is solely based ...
^^^
Line 1, column 323, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ends using Zeta rather than iAlpha. The authors recommendation is solely based on the f...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...y consumption at Zeta that at Alpha. The author must state the precise differenc...
^^^
Line 3, column 628, Rule ID: ALSO_SENT_END[1]
Message: 'Also' is not used at the end of the sentence. Use 'as well' instead.
Suggestion: as well
...e author must find out these statistics also. The locality at which the two headq...
^^^^
Line 5, column 70, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... headquarters are present also matters. The electricity board present at these loca...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, if, so, then, therefore, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1888.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 360.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.24444444444 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35587717469 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00444115713 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 154.0 204.123752495 75% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.427777777778 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 585.0 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.1046635385 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 94.4 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.0 23.324526521 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.1 5.70786347227 37% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.097868226085 0.218282227539 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0387834614454 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0423377216393 0.0701772020484 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0617866972394 0.128457276422 48% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0308280186352 0.0628817314937 49% => 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: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.82 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.64 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.