"A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of

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"A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of families in Bay City are two-income families, and a nationwide study has shown that such families eat significantly fewer home-cooked meals than they did a decade ago but at the same time express more concern about healthful eating. Therefore, the new Captain Seafood restaurant that specializes in seafood should be quite popular and profitable." -

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.

The argument, although presented in a succint way, is not free from faults. The author makes a few erroneous assumptions that lead to these faults. Firstly, the author states himself that seafood consumption has increased in Bay City restaurants by 30 percent. We should note that he is referring to more than one restaurant & not just a specific one. Hence, the sales of possibly a large number of restaurants has gone up & stating that only a specific restaurant must have become profitable as a result of it, sounds inconsistent & illogical.

Another faulty assumption that the author makes is - he assumes that a restaurant must specialize in a variety of food in order to serve it. Since seafood consumption has gone up in the city, it may so be that the inhabitants are consuming increasing amounts of seafood in possibly numerous restaurants throughout the city. In that case, since the customer base is distributed more or less evenly throughout various businesses in the city, it doesn't necessarily follow that the Captain Seafood restaurant has become profitable.

Thirdly, the author fails to take into account the case that the food served at the Captain Seafood restaurant (even though it specializes in seafood) may be inferior in taste or quality or both, to other eateries in Bay City. In such a situation, if customers do not find the food served there to their liking, they might abandon the Captain Seafood restaurant in favor of other restaurants. This situation would still be consistent to the recorded fact that seafood consumption has increased, but wouldn't necessarily mean that the Captain Seafood restaurant has become popular or profitable. The author should have ascertained whether the food served at the Captain Seafood restaurant is actually preferred by the customers over other restaurants before making the declaration that he did in his argument.

A fourth faulty assumption is based on a fact that the author fails to precisely ascertain - the actual level of consumption of seafood after the 30 percent increase. It may happen that five years ago, before the increase occurred, the level of seafood consumption was so low as to be negligible. In such a case, even after a 30 percent increase, the level of consumption may still not be high enough so as to guarantee definite profits for the Captain Seafood restaurant, even if the only contribution to the increase was from sales at the restaurant. The number of customers actually ordering seafood would still be pretty low, low enough that the profits or popularity of the restaurant would not increase by any significant degree at all.

Thus, the author makes a few faulty assumptions & fails to take into account some contradicting scenarios that call into question the accuracy of his argument. If he had noticed these unexplained situations & questions, then his argument might have been more reasonable & acceptable.

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Sentence: The argument, although presented in a succint way, is not free from faults.
Error: succint Suggestion: succinct

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.5 out of 6
Category: Excellent Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 476 350
No. of Characters: 2377 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.671 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.994 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.832 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 178 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 138 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.444 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.63 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.356 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.171 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5