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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 restaurant has replaced butter in all its outlets with margarine. It has noted that this change has led only 2 percent of the customers to complain and further concludes that this means 98 customers out of 100 are happy. The restaurant however, fails to address certain possibilities before coming to this conclusion. Many customers may still be unhappy about this change, yet they may feel diffident or unwelcomed to voice out their issues. There may even be several customers who are simply indifferent to such a change and go about their meals in an apathetic manner. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are happy with the change.
The restaurant believes that when customers are given margarine instead of butter they do not complain about it because they are unable to distinguish between these two ingredients or simply because they use the term ‘butter’ and ‘margarine’ interchangeably. The restaurant misses out on evaluating other possible explanations as to why customers behave in this manner. One probable explanation could be that the customers in fact like the way margarine tastes with their food. They could’ve requested the servers for butter because that is the ingredient they usually take with their meal. However, when given margarine instead, they may have felt that this tasted much better and hence voiced no concerns.
Some customers may decide not to complain in order to not create a scene within the restaurant. They may just politely let it slide when their choice of ingredient is being denied to them. It is possible that the servers are not as friendly that the customers feel like expressing complains to them.
Another alternative scenario for customers not complaining could be that their expectations from the restaurant could have dropped over time. When specifically asked for butter, if the restaurant serves margarine, any customer is to disregard the restaurant’s competencies. This is even a worse scenario for the Happy Pancake House restaurants as they are prone to lose their customers due to ignorant and ill-defined evaluation of ingredient preferences amongst their customers.
The restaurant seems to have jumped to conclusions without a thorough analysis of its customer’s behavior. In fact, instead of waiting for the customers to complain or express concerns about their food, the restaurant could have implemented a feedback system asking what the customers preferred better. This in turn would have made customers feel like they were welcome to express their views and that their opinions mattered in the restaurant’s decision making process.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 417 350
No. of Characters: 2154 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.519 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.165 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.751 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.85 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.995 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.335 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.453 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 552, Rule ID: IN_A_X_MANNER[1]
Message: Consider replacing "in an apathetic manner" with adverb for "apathetic"; eg, "in a hasty manner" with "hastily".
... such a change and go about their meals in an apathetic manner. This doesn't necessarily mean tha...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, hence, however, if, may, so, still, as to, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 51.0 28.8173652695 177% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 2.0 16.3942115768 12% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2245.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 415.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.40963855422 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51348521516 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.10900713867 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 213.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.513253012048 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 683.1 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => 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: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.6580928521 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.25 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.75 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.75 5.70786347227 48% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.124675748588 0.218282227539 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0488848628795 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0435859087757 0.0701772020484 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0758686633391 0.128457276422 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0529451591303 0.0628817314937 84% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.24 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.