Argue Topic#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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
The author concludes that the Happy Pancake House should extend replace butter by margarine to save costs throughout the rest of the country. However, the author's recommendation is unpersuasive because it relies on several questionable assumptions.
To begin with, the author assumes that only abot 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint, which indicates that an averave of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change but this may not be the case. However, not filing complaints cannot exactly mean that they are happy with the change. Instead, people were not satisfied with the change, but they just not decided to report the complaints officially or they just decide not to come back to the store, which could result decline of customers and could reduce profits significantly. Therefore, further evidence such as percents of satiesfied customers about the change should be required to verify the author's assumption.
Furthermore, it is assumed that people of Happy Pancake House who required butter did not know the differences between butter and margarine becaues they do not complain when they got margarine instead of butter but this may also be flawed. This is because no complaint cannot exactly mean they did not know the difference. People know the difference but they just ate without any complaint about this. Also the word many could not show exact quantity of people. Thue, the evidence which shows the number of servers who actually replied or survey about costomers weather they know the change or not is necessary.
Finally, the author's conclusion relies on the assumtion that the change should be extended to whole country, which should be substantiated with further support.
The author assumes the situation in southwest could be general and adaptable to whole country, but it may be typical and regional. In that case, if they adapt the change to whole country, and people of other regions are not satisfied with the cange, this could lead to huge loss of Happy Pancake House. Therefore, the further evidence about regional charicteristics should be questioned.
The author's conclusion relies on questionable assumption in several instances that is critical to suppot the conclusion. Therefore, evidence about percents of satiesfied customers about the change, survey about costomers weather they know the change, and regional charicteristics should be provided.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 383 350
No. of Characters: 1981 1500
No. of Different Words: 167 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.424 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.172 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.649 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 158 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.529 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.018 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.824 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.36 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.36 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 157, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...t the rest of the country. However, the authors recommendation is unpersuasive because ...
^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 669, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...change should be required to verify the authors assumption. Furthermore, it is assum...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 404, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...t ate without any complaint about this. Also the word many could not show exact quan...
^^^^
Line 4, column 15, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...nge or not is necessary. Finally, the authors conclusion relies on the assumtion that...
^^^^^^^
Line 6, column 6, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...icteristics should be questioned. The authors conclusion relies on questionable assum...
^^^^^^^
Line 6, column 147, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he conclusion. Therefore, evidence about percents of satiesfied customers about t...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, furthermore, however, if, may, so, therefore, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2031.0 2260.96107784 90% => OK
No of words: 383.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.30287206266 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42384287591 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73236568742 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.451697127937 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 618.3 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.4658237022 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.470588235 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.5294117647 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.76470588235 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.147227788477 0.218282227539 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.05434784759 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0726713994399 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0872228535376 0.128457276422 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0593452785161 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.76 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.19 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 Out of 6
---------------------
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.