The following appeared in a letter from a firm providing investment advice for a client.
"Most homes in the northeastern United States, where winters are typically cold, have traditionally used oil as their major fuel for heating. Last heating season that region experienced 90 days with below-normal temperatures, and climate forecasters predict that this weather pattern will continue for several more years. Furthermore, many new homes are being built in the region in response to recent population growth. Because of these trends, we predict an increased demand for heating oil and recommend investment in Consolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retail sale of home heating oil."
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 firm claims that the client should invest in the Consolidated industries because there will increased demand for heating oil. He/she advocates the claim with several reasons that seem plausible. However, it is rife with holes and assumptions which needs to be eliminated, in order to better bolster his/her claim, which will be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author causes a mistake of applying peripheral data into holistic data. For example, he/she reasons that because the weather forecaster predicts that the climate would be facing below-normal for several more years since it has been 90 days experiencing abnormally cold weather, there would be more demand in heating oil. However, this seems like a premature generalization. One can never predict how the weather would actually turn out. If having a below-normal temperature is abnormal, the weather could retrieve back to being normal and it would not be cold enough to use extensive amount of heating oil.
Furthermore, he/she claims that because the northeastern United States traditionally used heating oil, it would still be the same. However, the world is changing and there are various ways in heating the insides of the homes. We cannot be certain that the people in that region will still be using the same traditional strategy. Maybe using heating oil turns out not to be economical or environmentally unfriendly, and they are now using a new type of source in order to fuel the temperature of their house. Tradition can always change if there is a better modernized solution, so we cannot rely on the fact that heating oil would still be a dominant source of home heating.
Lastly, the firm advocates his/her claim by stating that because the population is growing and many new homes are being constructed, there will be more demands in heating oil. However, population growth does not always indicate in increase in new families. What if the growth of population only means that there are more babies being born? If this is the case, the number of families is the same as before, which leads to the demand of heating oil being the same as before.
To sum up, the firm's claim that the client should invest in Consolidated industries does seem plausible. However, through thorough investigation and reading the letter in various views, it could be confirmed that the letter is implausible and that there are several flaws that the firm needs to eliminate. In order for the author of the letter to maintain his/her claim, he/she should not generalize small data and suggest unwarranted and unclear proofs.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 438 350
No. of Characters: 2120 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.575 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.84 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.593 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.9 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.746 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.8 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.304 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.304 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 97, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'will' requires the base form of the verb: 'increase'
Suggestion: increase
...solidated industries because there will increased demand for heating oil. He/she advocate...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, so, still, for example, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => 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: 2176.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 431.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04872389791 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55637350225 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65782908142 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.475638051044 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 666.0 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.830576428 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.8 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.55 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.15 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.212758039675 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0699720011465 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0669127160665 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121679705212 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0400626422205 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.01 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.76 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.