130. The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint, 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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the argument, the author talks about the Happy Pancake House restaurant's decision to replace butter with margarine in the southwestern Unites States and the reaction people had to this change. Based on their reaction, the author suggests that the restaurant should replace butter with margarine throughout the country. However, this argument is not very persuasive as it is based on a lot of assumptions that are not clearly validated in the argument.
Firstly, the argument states that only 2 percent of the customers have filed a formal complaint against the replacement of butter. The author assumes that the rest 98 percent are happy with the change. This a flawed assumption as there might be customers that might have expressed their discontent in ways other than formal complaints. People might have directly told the waitor that they are not happy with the change or might have stopped coming to Happy Pancake House altogether. In any condition, recieving 2 percent formal complains does not indicate that rest 98 percent are happy.
Secondly, the author assumes that since people in southwestern United States did not have a problem with the change, people across United States will have the same reaction to the change. This again is a flawed assumption. There is a possibility that margarine might be locally accepted as a substitute of butter in southwestern United States as the public here is accustomed to it or margarine is already being used as ingrident on other staple food. This would change how people accross United States react to the change. Thus, this change might be happily accepted in some parts of the country and might be outrightly rejected in others.
Thirdly, the argument does not state the difference in the cost of butter and margarine. The argument assumes that margarine costs less than butter and the profit earned by replacing butter with margarine is large enough to let go of some of it's customers that are against this change. This is an assumption that needs through calculations of profit and loss margins in order to reach a conclusion.
In conclusion, the author has made many assumptions in the argument stated above. If the author provides more information on validating these assumptions then the argument will become more cogent.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: People might have directly told the waitor that they are not happy with the change or might have stopped coming to Happy Pancake House altogether.
Error: waitor Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: In any condition, recieving 2 percent formal complains does not indicate that rest 98 percent are happy.
Error: recieving Suggestion: receiving
Sentence: There is a possibility that margarine might be locally accepted as a substitute of butter in southwestern United States as the public here is accustomed to it or margarine is already being used as ingrident on other staple food.
Error: ingrident Suggestion: incident
Sentence: This would change how people accross United States react to the change.
Error: accross Suggestion: across
Sentence: Thus, this change might be happily accepted in some parts of the country and might be outrightly rejected in others.
Error: outrightly Suggestion: No alternate word
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- maybe not. need to argue against this:
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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine.
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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: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 376 350
No. of Characters: 1878 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.403 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.995 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.572 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 92 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.279 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.389 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 83, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...sumptions in the argument stated above. If the author provides more information on...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1920.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 376.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.10638297872 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.40348946061 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64196296557 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 169.0 204.123752495 83% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.449468085106 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 593.1 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.0487286051 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.666666667 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8888888889 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.38888888889 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.18917689502 0.218282227539 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0645581137962 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0771378292706 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105950748875 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0840567699732 0.0628817314937 134% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.86 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.