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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 writer of the prompt presents some skeletal information as premises for its argument, which are cogent enough. The argument lacks concrete evidence that can bolster its conclusion. The prompt argues that because only 2 percent of its customers complained about its recent replacement of butter with margarine, therefore 98 percent of its customers are happy with this change. Also, it goes on to indicate that, because servers present margarine to customers who request for butter, do not complain, consequentially, they cannot distinguish between butter and margarine, or that they loosely refer to butter as margarine interchangeably.
First of all, it is imperative to highlight that this argument tends to adopt an “either or fallacy”. In other words, the author presents only two options as the only available explanations for the Happy Pancake’s customers’ satisfaction level as regard the replacement of butter with margarine. It is possible that customers do not complain because butter and margarine do not taste very different, thus, they do not see a need to complain when given margarine. In addition, there is the adoption of inductive fallacy. The fact that only 2 percent of customers complained does not mean that 98 people out of 100 are truly happy with the change because we are not given the total number of customers the restaurant typically has on a good day. Correspondingly, the author needs to substantiate the argument with evidence of a survey that shows the total number of customer they had, prior to the change, and the customers they had after the change, in order to identify, if truly there was a little impact. Better still, a survey that determines the satisfaction level of the customers can also validate this argument.
Alternatively, as opposed to the customers not knowing the difference between butter and margarine, there is a possibility that the customers of Happy Pancake do not complain when they are given margarine, because margarine is healthier than butter, in the assumption that they are indeed happy with the change. Also, it may be that they did not see a convincing reason to complain about the change. However, this does not insinuate that they are happy with the change, because rather than complain, they can just as well stop patronizing Happy Pancakes and visit other similar restaurants.
In conclusion, the argument is replete with illogical reasoning, due to the absence of some very pertinent information that could have made the argument more compelling.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 186, 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.
...idence that can bolster its conclusion. The prompt argues that because only 2 perce...
^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'so', 'still', 'therefore', 'thus', 'well', 'in addition', 'in conclusion', 'first of all', 'in other words']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.218884120172 0.25644967241 85% => OK
Verbs: 0.150214592275 0.15541462614 97% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0643776824034 0.0836205057962 77% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0836909871245 0.0520304965353 161% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0429184549356 0.0272364105082 158% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.135193133047 0.125424944231 108% => OK
Participles: 0.019313304721 0.0416121511921 46% => Some participles wanted.
Conjunctions: 2.99501279523 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0257510729614 0.026700313972 96% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.0987124463519 0.113004496875 87% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0128755364807 0.0255425247493 50% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0171673819742 0.0127820249294 134% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2551.0 2731.13054187 93% => OK
No of words: 408.0 446.07635468 91% => OK
Chars per words: 6.25245098039 6.12365571057 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.49433085973 4.57801047555 98% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.377450980392 0.378187486979 100% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.30637254902 0.287650121315 107% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.225490196078 0.208842608468 108% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.166666666667 0.135150697306 123% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99501279523 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 207.018472906 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.455882352941 0.469332199767 97% => OK
Word variations: 48.9458960093 52.1807786196 94% => OK
How many sentences: 15.0 20.039408867 75% => OK
Sentence length: 27.2 23.2022227129 117% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.7056005712 57.7814097925 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 170.066666667 141.986410481 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.2 23.2022227129 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.0 0.724660767414 138% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.14285714286 78% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 57.837254902 51.9672348444 111% => OK
Elegance: 1.3488372093 1.8405768891 73% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.329736942668 0.441005458295 75% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.141828503112 0.135418324435 105% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0630573144913 0.0829849096947 76% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.574718433915 0.58762219726 98% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.189644797013 0.147661913831 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.152843403956 0.193483328276 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.078457131397 0.0970749176394 81% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.458724203322 0.42659136922 108% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.16528656625 0.0774707102158 213% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.233999998391 0.312017818177 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0711796997771 0.0698173142475 102% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.87684729064 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.82512315271 21% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 7.0 6.46551724138 108% => OK
Negative topic words: 3.0 5.36822660099 56% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.82389162562 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 10.0 14.657635468 68% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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: This is not the final score. 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.