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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House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 business manager suggested to replace butter with margarine based on several explanations, however, he/she fails to consider other possible alternatives.
Firstly, the manager assumes most clients are satisfied with the change simply because they did not criticize, but could it be that the Happy Pancake House restaurant is a high-end restaurant typically located in the most expensive downtown area and its potential clients are usually self-aware and elegant people who do not want to bother themselves getting into a serious argument? Or the Happy Pancake House restaurant is an Asian style restaurant and its target audiences are generally shy immigrants who are not used to express their opinions in public?
Besides, he/she states that clients cannot tell the difference between butter and margarine since many servers have reported lots of customers who originally asked for butter did not complain upon receiving margarine instead. However, it is highly possible that those reported servers did not tell the truth due to the fear of not performing well in the job thus exposing themselves to layoff risk. On the other hand, clients might have already noticed the change and felt uncomfortable about it but they are caring enough to think there might be a temporary shortage for butter, which does not imply they are perfectly fine with this adjustment.
Finally, the manager mentions the replacement would be able to bring profitability because it helps reduce the cost of purchasing butter in the southwestern restaurants thus should be enforced in the southeast and northeast branches as well. However, what works in one area does not imply in another. He/she fails to examine the butter price throughout different places. Some restaurants might be closer to the origin that produces butter, hence cut down the cost resulted from transportation, which in turn causes lower price than purchasing margarine.
Apart from that, he/she also overlooks other possibilities such as eating habits might vary from place to place, people who live in the southeast or northeast might prefer butter over margarine thus willing to pay higher expense in order to fit their eating habits. In such a case, changing butter might bring discomfort hence decreasing the customer retention, which severely affects the profitability.
Therefore, it is better to take above alternatives into consideration before actually executing the change or pay close attention to this adjustment to see whether it goes well throughout different areas in the following months.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
argument 3 and argument 4 are out of topic. or it is another GRE topic.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 405 350
No. of Characters: 2116 1500
No. of Different Words: 225 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.486 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.225 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.7 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.154 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.347 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.846 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.353 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.681 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 22, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'suggested replacing'.
Suggestion: suggested replacing
The business manager suggested to replace butter with margarine based on several ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, besides, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, look, so, therefore, thus, well, apart from, such as, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2174.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 401.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.42144638404 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47492842339 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75634320735 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 227.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.56608478803 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 672.3 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 82.1088900332 57.8364921388 142% => OK
Chars per sentence: 167.230769231 119.503703932 140% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.8461538462 23.324526521 132% => OK
Discourse Markers: 11.2307692308 5.70786347227 197% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.165590477925 0.218282227539 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0588849497531 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0324124195592 0.0701772020484 46% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.086679104403 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0330853737272 0.0628817314937 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 19.5 14.3799401198 136% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 32.57 48.3550499002 67% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.2 12.197005988 133% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.75 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.42 8.32208582834 113% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.