The author of the argument states that because the building constructed by Zeta has lower maintenance costs, lower energy consumption, and lower turnover rate than Alpha, the new building project will be constructed by Zeta. The premise of this argument is not completely cogent from a logical standpoint because it fails to address three questions that are critical to the understanding and validity of the argument presented.
First, the author states that the cost of construction of the headquarters built by Zeta costs 30% more to build than the headquarters constructed by Alpha. The author does not provide any numbers on the actual cost of construction, only percentages. If we assume that the construction cost charged by Alpha was $100,000 then the construction cost charged by Zeta would be $130,000, only a $30,000 difference, which isn’t much for a large, highly diversified company. Therefore the difference in prices would be nominal and the company would not be spending a significant amount of money by choosing to contract Zeta instead of Alpha.
Furthermore, the writer states that the building’s expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha’s. Again, the writer does not provide any data to back this claim. A savings of half can make a big difference or be negligible. Lets say that the maintenance expenses for the office built by Alpha was $20,000 and for Zeta was half of that, $10,000. That is a savings of $10,000 in one year. Over the next 10 years, the company would be saving $100,000, easily covering the $30,000 price difference assumed in the previous paragraph. Therefore, in the long run, the company would actually be saving more money by choosing to work with Zeta instead of Alpha.
Finally, the argument claims without warrant that what holds true 10 years ago will hold true today. So even if we assume that the benefits of choosing Zeta over Alpha are the same, the argument is still lacking because it does not provide enough information to show that the general economic climate has not changed. If indeed the benefits are the same today as they were 10 years ago, then choosing Zeta over Alpha to construct the company’s new headquarters will indeed be cost beneficial in the long run.
By provided data on exact costs for the company and proof that cost benefits has not changed, the argument could garner a stronger basis for reasoning. However, without this information, the argument fails to make a convincing case that using Zeta will be more beneficial for the company than using Alpha.
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Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
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The important thing in GRE is to find out flaws not numbers, suppose the number is small.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 429 350
No. of Characters: 2075 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.551 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.837 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.591 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 138 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.235 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.3 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.529 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.587 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.123 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 468, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...or a large, highly diversified company. Therefore the difference in prices would be nomin...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 256, Rule ID: LETS_LET[1]
Message: Did you mean 'Let's'?
Suggestion: Let's
...make a big difference or be negligible. Lets say that the maintenance expenses for t...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, so, still, then, therefore
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2146.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 428.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.01401869159 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.548423998 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74868853665 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.450934579439 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 643.5 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.6341366628 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.222222222 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.7777777778 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => 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: 0.216778299326 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0734000593511 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0557170564667 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.128395290768 0.128457276422 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0215294782245 0.0628817314937 34% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.