"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 author states that people in southwestern United States don’t distinguish butter from margarine or use the term ‘butter’ to refer to either butter or margarine. The explanation proposed by the author resulting in the aforementioned conclusion is based on the fact that the customers do not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter, indicating that they are happy. The result of the argument can be explained in alternate ways, like the not caring attitude of customers, or their lack of willingness to complain, or maybe their favoring margarine over butter. These are plausible explanations that might have resulted in only rare complaints by customers.
One plausible alternative is that the customers do not have enough time or willingness to complain about the substitution. There are only a handful of people who actually care about what is being served to them, and the discrepancy in the served items. Thus only those who are concerned enough about what they are eating are the ones who complain. It can not be stated that just because only 2 percent of the customers are complaining about the replacement, the rest 98 percent customers are happy with the change. It can only be known by means of a customer review/ survey where their preferences and satisfaction level with the change are questioned.
In another scenario, maybe some customers have stopped dining at Happy Pancake House restaurants after the implementation of the change. This can only be known by data regarding the change in number of customers dining now, and before the change was put forth. It is possible that they have started dining at other restaurants more and thus the number of complaints are only very few. Also, it is an arrant possibility that some new customers who like margarine over butter have started dining in the restaurant after the change was made. This might even cover for the change in number of customers dining in the restaurants. All this needs to be considered deliberately before generalizing that people can’t distinguish butter from margarine.
Another possible alternative to the above argument is that customers are not much bothered whether they get butter or margarine. They might care only about the taste and quality of what they are being served. If that doesn’t get much affected by substituting margarine for butter, then most of the customers would not complain, as they are not bothered if they get either of the two. Even if the taste differs a little, most customers would not be affected much and would continue to dine.
Considering the alternative scenarios mentioned above, there are alternate explanations that could have resulted in the customer's response to the change brought about by the restaurant. The author’s conclusion is not the only explanation for the mentioned behavior. Each of the aforementioned explanations substantiate the facts presented in the argument and can very well serve as the explanations behind the argument given by the author.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 390, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...butter, indicating that they are happy. The result of the argument can be explained...
^^^
Line 3, column 141, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'handfuls', 'handsful'?
Suggestion: handfuls; handsful
...bout the substitution. There are only a handful of people who actually care about what ...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 254, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...nd the discrepancy in the served items. Thus only those who are concerned enough abo...
^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'also', 'but', 'if', 'may', 'regarding', 'so', 'then', 'thus', 'well']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.21200750469 0.25644967241 83% => OK
Verbs: 0.196998123827 0.15541462614 127% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0562851782364 0.0836205057962 67% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0712945590994 0.0520304965353 137% => OK
Pronouns: 0.031894934334 0.0272364105082 117% => OK
Prepositions: 0.136960600375 0.125424944231 109% => OK
Participles: 0.078799249531 0.0416121511921 189% => Less participles wanted.
Conjunctions: 2.92016119982 2.79052419416 105% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0168855534709 0.026700313972 63% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.121951219512 0.113004496875 108% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0225140712946 0.0255425247493 88% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0206378986867 0.0127820249294 161% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3038.0 2731.13054187 111% => OK
No of words: 491.0 446.07635468 110% => OK
Chars per words: 6.18737270876 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70728369723 4.57801047555 103% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.358452138493 0.378187486979 95% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.264765784114 0.287650121315 92% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.211812627291 0.208842608468 101% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.169042769857 0.135150697306 125% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92016119982 2.79052419416 105% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 207.018472906 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417515274949 0.469332199767 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 46.9898683415 52.1807786196 90% => OK
How many sentences: 22.0 20.039408867 110% => OK
Sentence length: 22.3181818182 23.2022227129 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.6284483871 57.7814097925 67% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.090909091 141.986410481 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3181818182 23.2022227129 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.454545454545 0.724660767414 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 3.58251231527 84% => OK
Readability: 48.7947602296 51.9672348444 94% => OK
Elegance: 1.425 1.8405768891 77% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.322578568838 0.441005458295 73% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.162984307642 0.135418324435 120% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0742534428268 0.0829849096947 89% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.60028932713 0.58762219726 102% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.145935709362 0.147661913831 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.144264954729 0.193483328276 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0665306629006 0.0970749176394 69% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.379356194095 0.42659136922 89% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0837795417003 0.0774707102158 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.223337044538 0.312017818177 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0701470037254 0.0698173142475 100% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.33743842365 144% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.82512315271 62% => OK
Positive topic words: 12.0 6.46551724138 186% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 1.0 2.82389162562 35% => OK
Total topic words: 19.0 14.657635468 130% => OK
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Rates: 62.5 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.75 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations to cover all aspects.