2. The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
"Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest control services at our warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years in Palm City, continued to service our warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage. Even though the price charged by Fly-Away is considerably lower, our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The authors recommendation for Buzzoff pest control services is extended on many weak assumptions. The above passage fails to provide sufficient evidences and facts which are necessary to decide between both the services.
Firstly, we need to know the various factors which the author have taken into account while comparing both the cities. It may happen that pest control is difficult in Palm city due to other factors like temperature, weather, locality etc. Similarly we also need to know how big both the facilities are, Volume of products housed by each facility, total value of foods stored in each facility. This will give us a clear picture of both the warehouses and will make the comparison lucid. Without this, one may also assume that the capacity of warehouse in Palm city is much more than that of Wintervale and percentage loss at Palm City was less than that of Wintervale.
Secondly, we need to know about the service charges by Fly-Away Pest Control Company. The comparison made above is based on the assumption that the difference in service charges between the two companies is less than the difference in loss caused by the pest damage. Even if we assume that the difference in service charge is not more than 10000$, we still need to know about the reliability of pest control services offered by Buzzoff company in palm City. It is quite possible that Fly-Away Company is the best in pest control business in Palm City.
Finally, the memo nowhere mentions that Fly-Away pest control started its services before last month. We need to know when did Fly-Away pest control began its service. And it is also possible that pest control is a gradual process and few months are not enough to provide measurable results. Therefore, we should know how much time does it take to effectively produce positive results.
In conclusion, all the above questions and factors should be considered while taking a decision, making the whole process easier and more sensible
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 333 350
No. of Characters: 1615 1500
No. of Different Words: 174 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.272 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.85 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.44 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 115 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 51 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.523 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.377 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.626 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.223 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5