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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 filed a formal complaint, 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 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, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country."
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 author of this memorandum claims that, in order for Happy Pancake House to save cost, all the butter should be changed to margarine, and all other Happy Pancake Houses in the US should adopt the same method. His claim appears to be based on a statistical result that shows only 2 percent of the customers have complained about being served margarine instead of butter. He then makes some assumptions regarding the survey result. However, I do not find his assumptions convincing because he fails to provide compelling reasoning and evidence in his argument for his assumptions to hold. Without stating these details, the author's argument is not persuasive to me.
First of all, the author assumes too hastily that two percent of the customers who have been to Happy Pancake House is not a significant number of people. Yet there is no evidence in the paragraph that states the total number of people who have been to this restaurant. It might be possible that there are many people who have been to the restaurant, making two percent a significant amount. Thus, the author's claim that not a lot of people have complained is not valid without any information on the total number of customers.
Secondly, the author made a false assumption that those who did not complain are happy with the replacement of butter with margarine. Even though 98 percent of the customers did not file a complaint, it is possible that some of them wanted to but were not able to find a way to do so. It is also probable that some customers did not notice the change at all because they were new to the restaurant. Clearly, these are all possible reasons why these people did not file complaints. However, without knowing these details about the customers, the assumption that they are all happy is unsupported.
Lastly, the author assumes that replacing margarine with butter can reduce the cost to the restaurant not only in the Southwest but also in other parts of the country. This assumption is not reasonable because the excludes the possibility that the situation of the restaurants in other parts of the US might be different from in the Southwest. It is possible that the customers in the Southwest do not care too much about having margarine instead of butter. Nonetheless, people in, say, the Midwest are concerned with being served butter, which may result in a decrease in sales or revenue, followed by a decrease in profit. Without doing a research or survey on the difference, the author cannot assume that this cost-saving strategy applies elsewhere. Furthermore, this strategy may not have the same effect in other places as in the Southwest. Perhaps adopting other methods can result in a more significant reduction in the cost.
All in all, the author made a few false assumptions without stating some facts or evidence. For example, he should mention how many customers have been to Happy Pancake House in order for the number two percent to make sense. He should provide evidence that the customers who have not complained are happy with the replacement. Also, he should compare other areas with the Southwest before proposing that the same method should be adopted there as well. His argument is not persuasive as it stands. In order to convince me that the restaurants in other places should switch butter to margarine and that indeed using margarine saves the cost, the author needs to provide evidence and reasoning to support his assumptions.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-09 | wo00_hi | 55 | view |
| 2019-11-21 | Yann | 43 | view |
| 2019-10-29 | bmartinurcelay | 63 | view |
| 2019-10-12 | asif13 | 59 | view |
| 2019-10-03 | Vignesh Harikrishnan | 16 | view |
- 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 f 66
- To understand the most important characteristics of a society, one must study its major cities.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In deve 66
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 626, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...old. Without stating these details, the authors argument is not persuasive to me. Fi...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 202, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ere is no evidence in the paragraph that states the total number of people who ha...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, nonetheless, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, for example, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 52.0 28.8173652695 180% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 79.0 55.5748502994 142% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2878.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 586.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91126279863 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.92010537223 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64176168896 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.39590443686 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 901.8 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 14.0 4.96107784431 282% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.4960953094 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.592592593 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7037037037 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.40740740741 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.216134954792 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0621787575998 0.0743258471296 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0735918058855 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.132709351602 0.128457276422 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0403773275873 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.5 14.3799401198 87% => 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: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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.