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 FlyAway 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. This difference in pest damage is best explained by the negligence of FlyAway ."
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 vice president in his memo makes an argument wherein he attributes the blame for greater monetary damage in food to negligence of Fly-away. He supports his explanation by comparing the performance of Fly-away at warehouse at Palm City with that of Buzzoff Pest control in warehouse at wintervale. However, there is possibility for a number of alternative explanations which can account for facts presented.
Firstly, it is given that contract was signed with Fly-away recently . It may be possible that effectiveness of any pest control spray depends on giving it sufficient incubation time for showing its efficiency. May be the company was not given enough time to fairly evaluate the effectiveness its methods in controlling the pests. While on other hand Buzzoff pest control had a run for many years. Thus, Fly-away may not exactly be negligent in its duties.
Secondly, it may be possible that the warehouse at Palm City is much larger than the warehouse at Wintervale. If warehouse size is twice that of Wintervale than the proportion of damage to total quantity will be same at both the places. This precludes the explanation that Fly-Away was negligent as both the companies were equally effective in controlling the damage.
Thirdly, there could be another explanation based on the price of food stored in both the warehouses. It is possible that food stored in warehouse at Palm City is twice as costly as that that stored in warehouse at Wintervale. The damage of $20,000 at the former may indicate same quantity as the damage of $10,000 at latter warehouse.
Finally, the climatic conditions at Palm city may have changed drastically in previous months making the place more wet than usual. This may account for increased pest prevalence than usual at place. This may require a change in the air circulation equipment used in warehouse. Such sudden change in climate conditions may not be there in Wintervale accounting for better performance.
In conclusion, a number of possible explanations exist for greater monetary damage at warehouse under Fly-Away when compared to that under Buzzoff. Thus, the explanation provided may be suspect to come to any conclusions.
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- OK
---------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 356 350
No. of Characters: 1792 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.344 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.034 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.821 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 105 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.686 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.8 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5