The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that 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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The recommendation that replacing butter with margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants would increase profitability is based on implications that lack both adequate information and cogent reasons.
In the first place, the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants states that since only 2 percent of customers have complained about the change, then it means that the rest of them are happy with it. In order to draw such a conclusion it would be appropriate to ask: were customers aware of the mentioned change? Since margarine has a similar taste to butter, and furthermore thinking that it would be really hard to distinguish its flavor if eaten with pancakes, then it is probable that most of the customers did not notice the difference. If they would have been aware of it in advance, then it is reasonable to think that more and more people would have paid more attention to the difference in taste, thus may resulting in more complaints.
Moreover, how is this change affecting the average number of customers eating at these restaurants? From the memorandum we know that only a few people who asked for butter and received margarine instead have complained about it. It could also be that the majority of those who did not complain, just decided to not come anymore after noticing a different taste in the pancakes they had. Having an insight on the trend of the number of customers consuming at the restaurants before and after the change would help in knowing if they really didn’t notice it, thus bolstering the manager’s claim.
Also, how cheaper is using margarine instead of butter? If there is a substantial difference in prices between the two, then it would be reasonable to think that this change represents a real cost-saving solution that could increase profitability. If the cost of margarine is slightly lower than butter then it might not be worth it to risk losing customers because of this change.
On the other hand, it is really important to know how much butter, on average, was consumed by each restaurant. If the recipe used for the Happy Pancake House’s pancakes requires great quantities of butter, then even a slight difference in costs would represent a huge saving of money. Not knowing this kind of information undermines the manager’s recommendation.
In conclusion, I would say that the manager of Happy House Pancakes restaurants needed to answer these questions in order to support his memorandum with appropriate information, thus resulting in a more cogent and coherent recommendation.
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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: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 421 350
No. of Characters: 2081 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.53 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.943 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.804 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 105 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.312 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.352 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.613 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 562, Rule ID: IF_WOULD_HAVE_VBN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'had been'?
Suggestion: had been
... did not notice the difference. If they would have been aware of it in advance, then it is reas...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 249, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...tion that could increase profitability. If the cost of margarine is slightly low...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, if, may, moreover, really, so, then, thus, in conclusion, kind of, in the first place, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2146.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 420.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10952380952 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52701905584 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89277777669 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485714285714 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 669.6 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.753995288 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.125 119.503703932 112% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.25 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.4375 5.70786347227 148% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
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: 0.349754081886 0.218282227539 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.116773865766 0.0743258471296 157% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116994823216 0.0701772020484 167% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.19039727535 0.128457276422 148% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0676122389954 0.0628817314937 108% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.2 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 87.0 98.500998004 88% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.