The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, 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 do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. "
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.
The argument given seems plausible at a glance however, on meticulous analysis of the argument, it is specious. Based an the unwarranted assumptions, the business manager, made a conclusion that the costumer do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term butter for either butter or margarine. Three questions must be answered in order to strengthen the argument.
Firstly, how many costumers does the Happy Pancake House actually have? Is the number of costumer decreased highly after the change of butter to margarine? The manager does not provide any information on the number of costumer and may be there are only 5 costumers and 1 complained about the replacement. Also, the manager mentions that replacement of butter had little impact on costumer, the term little is vague, which undermine the argument.
Secondly, do all the costumers seem frank? May the costumers have complains in their mind and hesitate to express in words.
We cannot infer that the costumers were happy with the replacement. Do the manager took feedback from the costumer? Have they personally said that they were happy by the replacement? there is no any clue about these questions in the argument making the argument specious.
Finally, do the costumers prefer margarine to butter? They do not complain about the replacement due to their preference of butter to margarine. This does not necessarily mean that the costumer were not able to distinguish butter from margarine, neither it can be concluded that they used the term butter for both butter or margarine.
In sum the argument is based on unwarranted assumptions and unsubstantiated conclusion. No any conclusion should be made without rigorous analysis of the feedback from the costumer. And therefore, to strengthen the argument the manager must answer the above questions which undermined the argument.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 298 350
No. of Characters: 1526 1500
No. of Different Words: 141 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.155 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.121 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.782 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 113 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.556 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.551 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.358 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.616 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 119, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
... of the argument, it is specious. Based an the unwarranted assumptions, the busine...
^^
Line 1, column 119, Rule ID: DT_DT[1]
Message: Maybe you need to remove one determiner so that only 'an' or 'the' is left.
Suggestion: an; the
... of the argument, it is specious. Based an the unwarranted assumptions, the business m...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 184, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: There
...hat they were happy by the replacement? there is no any clue about these questions in...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 193, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...were happy by the replacement? there is no any clue about these questions in the a...
^^
Line 11, column 89, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: Now
...mptions and unsubstantiated conclusion. No any conclusion should be made without r...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, firstly, however, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 55.5748502994 67% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1572.0 2260.96107784 70% => OK
No of words: 298.0 441.139720559 68% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.27516778523 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.15483772266 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89985896533 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 145.0 204.123752495 71% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.486577181208 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 491.4 705.55239521 70% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 22.8473053892 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.7861395736 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 82.7368421053 119.503703932 69% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.6842105263 23.324526521 67% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.10526315789 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.162026122369 0.218282227539 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0540135580103 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0499736466176 0.0701772020484 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0827507438438 0.128457276422 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0539756993427 0.0628817314937 86% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.25 48.3550499002 116% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.05 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 98.500998004 64% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.0 11.1389221557 72% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
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.