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 vice president concludes that the responsibility of completing the new building project should be given to Alpha instead of Zeta. This conclusion is formulated on the basis of statistics indicating that the building constructed by Zeta has been more demanding in terms of funds required for maintenance than the building constructed by Alpha. However, the argument presented by the vice president fails to be cogent as the claims are riddled with unwarranted assumptions.
Firstly, the argument fails to consider the fact that the buildings were constructed in two different regions. It is possible that the construction costs were higher because of the region in which the Zeta company built its building. Perhaps, that region was uneven, and the materials required to build a strong foundation for the building in that region were costlier, thus increasing the overall cost.
Additionally, one year is a short period of time to make judgements about the abilities of a construction company, that too on the basis of the expenses for maintenance of one of its buildings. The author never mentions the way in which these buildings were used. What if the building constructed by Zeta was being used as a place for storing and operating heavy machinery while the building constructed by Alpha was being used as an office, this could explain the greater maintenance cost as well as the higher energy consumption in Zeta’s building.
Lastly, the author never mentions how the stable workforce and little employee turnover affects the quality of the buildings constructed. It is possible that, due to the nature of the companies, greater employee turnover could be potentially better as it would lead to younger and more skilled workers joining the company. Construction work is laborious work that requires and values strength and fitness moreover experience.
Thus, due to several unwarranted assumptions and holes in the argument, the vice president’s conclusion is flawed. We need more data to be able to create a comprehensive conclusion and to enable the vice president to make an informed decision.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 338 350
No. of Characters: 1736 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.288 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.136 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.875 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 129 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.288 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.342 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.62 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 514, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ity of the labor might play an important role because these both are constructed ...
^^
Line 3, column 308, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “As” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...definitely raise the manintancnce cost. As a matter of fact the maintenance depart...
^^
Line 3, column 466, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (Alpha) must be used with a third-person verb: 'companies'.
Suggestion: companies
...ad flawed his argument by blaming Alpha company for high maintenance. If any of these s...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 21, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'trues'?
Suggestion: trues
...power consumption. Finally, even if it true that Alpha’s construction was responsib...
^^^^
Line 5, column 349, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...sons in which Alpha had or did not have a do, the author have referred Zeta company....
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, hence, however, if, regarding, second, so, then, therefore, third, thus, as to, in conclusion, as a matter of fact, first of all, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2719.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 530.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13018867925 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79809637944 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81534535276 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 235.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.443396226415 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 842.4 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.9630816968 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.291666667 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0833333333 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.95833333333 5.70786347227 122% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => 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: 0.131693407778 0.218282227539 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0475883642491 0.0743258471296 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0509906622625 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0780676458856 0.128457276422 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0456001756857 0.0628817314937 73% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.47 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.89 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.