Essay topics:
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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 manager of the Happy Pancake House claims that changing butter to margarine had little impact on customers based on two insufficient facts. His explanation are not sufficient to back up his claim because there could be other alternative explanations that could better address the reaction of customers.
According to the manager, only 2 percent of the customers complained, and as the rest has not, he thinks the rest are happy about the change. However, not expressing one's complaint is inequivalent to being satisfied, and unless the manager asks the 98 percent of customers about their satisfaction about the recent experience at the restaurant, he has no other way to figure out how they think. In other words, the customers may have discussed the new change with their friends or other rating apps, just not on the platform that the manager has access to. They could have considered the change as a one time event or just decided to use a different restaurant.
Similar to this, the reports by servers are not presenting the actual thought of customers but just their own assumptions. The customers may have not recongized that what they received was margarine or may have considered it too trifle to complain. However, whether they knew about the change or not, the servers cannot know unless they directly ask them or observed their reaction. In other words, the fact that customers did not complain is not sufficient to substantiate the claim of the manager.
Lastly, the manager states that the customers do not distinsuigh butter from margarine based on the fact that they did not point it out. Considering that butter and margarine has similar taste and shape, it is difficult to tell the different. In addition, margarine is supposed to be similar to butter, despite the fact that it is made of vegetable oil. Therefore, it is not only wrong to use the logic that customers do not distinguish the two but also erroneous to say that the customers use the word butter to mean butter or margarine.
In conclusion, the manager has used insufficient explanation based on pure assumptions as the basis to claim that the change had no impact on customers. He did not consider alternative explanations that could better explain the low percentage of complaints.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1852 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.861 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.704 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.812 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.307 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.361 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.361 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 166, Rule ID: ONES[1]
Message: Did you mean 'one's'?
Suggestion: one's
...out the change. However, not expressing ones complaint is inequivalent to being sati...
^^^^
Line 3, column 225, Rule ID: TOO_TO[1]
Message: Did you mean 'to trifle'?
Suggestion: to trifle
...was margarine or may have considered it too trifle to complain. However, whether they knew...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 229, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'trifles'?
Suggestion: trifles
...margarine or may have considered it too trifle to complain. However, whether they knew...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, lastly, may, so, therefore, in addition, in conclusion, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1893.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 381.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.96850393701 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41805628031 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78303358496 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.464566929134 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 582.3 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 36.6228668321 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.3125 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.8125 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.875 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.141323540971 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0531348541312 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0717574087446 0.0701772020484 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0841380280929 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0512938323957 0.0628817314937 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.84 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.