59. The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.
A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well- appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals.
In this memo, the president of Bower Builders argues that they should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens at the expense of the dining room to galvanize its sales and profits. However, the argument is flawed for numerous following reasons, since it relies on unwarranted explicit and implicit assumptions.
Firstly, the author assumes that the nationwide survey is reliable and trustworthy. Although this might be the case, there are two questions to ask before blindly relying on this survey. Firstly, is the survey conducted towards a reasonable number of people with a sound statistical knowledge? If the survey is not conducted based on an adequate method, the author cannot argue based on the survey. Secondly, is the result of the national survey applicable to the local market? It is possible that while the national survey indicates that most of people favor a large family room and kitchen, the people in the local market, on which Bower Builders should focus, may not share the same opinion. Thus, the author should provide relevant data about the nationwide survey and its relationship with the local market.
Secondly, even if assumption above somehow guaranteed to be true, the author is still unreasonably assumes that the reason that houses built by Domus Constuction sold much faster at a significantly higher price solely because of its large family rooms and kitchens. However, the author provides no adequate evidence to substantiate this assumption. It is entirely possible, for example, that those houses are sold much faster at a higher price, because of their location or other architecture elements, such as light or modern exterior design. If this turns out to be true, the author’s assumption that if only build houses with large size of family rooms and kitchens would not be cogent.
Lastly, even conceding that local customers strongly favors large family rooms and kitchens and these are the only requirements to sell houses fast and at a high price, the author still makes false assumption that the opinion of the ‘many’ recent buyers can be generalized to the whole market consumers. However, common sense tells us that simply ‘many’ people cannot be taken as the opinion of the whole population. We need to know if the ‘many’ is really significant number, which can represent the whole customer population of Bower Builders. If it turns out that their preference for large family room and kitchen at the expense of dining room cannot be extended to the whole customers, the author’s argument cannot be persuasive.
In sum, the argument is a dubious one. To corroborate it, the author needs to provide if the nationwide survey is reliable for the decision-making. Also, it needs to be elucidated whether houses will be sold only if they have larger family rooms and kitchens even at the expense of dining rooms.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK for 'Firstly'. In GRE/GMAT, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:
It works for time A (10 years ago), but it doesn't mean it works for time B (nowadays).
It works for location A (a city, community, nation), but it doesn't mean it works for location B (another city, community, nation).
It works for people A (a manager), but it doesn't mean it works for people B (a worker).
It works for event A (one event, project... ), but it doesn't mean it works for event B (another event, project...).
It works for A and B, but not C.
......
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argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- Not exactly. Suppose ‘many’ is 100%, it still doesn't mean something. Need to consider future buyers.
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flaws:
need one more argument:
To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. //maybe some homes only
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 472 350
No. of Characters: 2329 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.661 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.934 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.544 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.6 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.975 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.85 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.559 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 264, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[6]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'sound statistical knowledge'.
Suggestion: sound statistical knowledge
...ards a reasonable number of people with a sound statistical knowledge? If the survey is not conducted based o...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 540, Rule ID: MOST_SOME_OF_NNS[1]
Message: After 'most of', you should use 'the' ('most of the people') or simply say ''most people''.
Suggestion: most of the people; most people
...hile the national survey indicates that most of people favor a large family room and kitchen, ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'really', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'thus', 'while', 'for example', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.232727272727 0.25644967241 91% => OK
Verbs: 0.129090909091 0.15541462614 83% => OK
Adjectives: 0.105454545455 0.0836205057962 126% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0690909090909 0.0520304965353 133% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0272727272727 0.0272364105082 100% => OK
Prepositions: 0.118181818182 0.125424944231 94% => OK
Participles: 0.0309090909091 0.0416121511921 74% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.81287562527 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0236363636364 0.026700313972 89% => OK
Particles: 0.00363636363636 0.001811407834 201% => OK
Determiners: 0.110909090909 0.113004496875 98% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0236363636364 0.0255425247493 93% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00545454545455 0.0127820249294 43% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2908.0 2731.13054187 106% => OK
No of words: 472.0 446.07635468 106% => OK
Chars per words: 6.16101694915 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6610686524 4.57801047555 102% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.396186440678 0.378187486979 105% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.258474576271 0.287650121315 90% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.199152542373 0.208842608468 95% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.114406779661 0.135150697306 85% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81287562527 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 207.018472906 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459745762712 0.469332199767 98% => OK
Word variations: 51.8005411425 52.1807786196 99% => OK
How many sentences: 20.0 20.039408867 100% => OK
Sentence length: 23.6 23.2022227129 102% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.6500380807 57.7814097925 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 145.4 141.986410481 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.6 23.2022227129 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.8 0.724660767414 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 3.58251231527 56% => OK
Readability: 49.4474576271 51.9672348444 95% => OK
Elegance: 1.6935483871 1.8405768891 92% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.433112746707 0.441005458295 98% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.140287048415 0.135418324435 104% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0941926415958 0.0829849096947 114% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.616360190968 0.58762219726 105% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.139497954967 0.147661913831 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.193539992437 0.193483328276 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0956647519008 0.0970749176394 99% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.419714899044 0.42659136922 98% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0686114535994 0.0774707102158 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.304925378372 0.312017818177 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.085559535944 0.0698173142475 123% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.87684729064 58% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.82512315271 145% => OK
Positive topic words: 8.0 6.46551724138 124% => OK
Negative topic words: 4.0 5.36822660099 75% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 16.0 14.657635468 109% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 79.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.75 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: 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.