The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town — Adams Realty and Fitch Realty — Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
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.
From the above statements the author concludes that if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty and not Fitch Realty. The author arrives on all these conclusions through a series of assumptions based on a few facts. But these assumptions may not prove to be true and if not, then the conclusion derived by the author fails to hold any credibility.
Firstly, the author states that the number of real estate agents of Adams Realty is higher than that if Fitch Realty and also many of the agents of Fitch Realty work only part time. By this the author assumes that Adams Realty is superior than Fitch Realty. But it is no where stated that the quality of workers working at Adams Realty is greater than those working at Fitch Realty. There may be more number of workers atAdams Realty but the quality of workers, the amount of work the put in, how hard working they are, are all factors that greatly affect the conclusionof which firm is the superior one.
Secondly, the author talks about the revenue generated by both the firms and states that since Adams Realty generates a greater revenue than Fitch Realty, it is a superior firm. But while reaching this conclusion, the author fails to acknowledge the fact that the number of workers working in Fitch is lesser than that of Adams and naturally when the firm is smaller, the revenue generated by the firm will also be lesser than that of the bigger firms with a higher work force. And this may not be the only reason why the firm generates a lesser revenue. As mentioned earlier, there is no comparision based on the quality of service that they offer the customers and it may very well be that Fitch Realty provide the customers with much better rates fortheir houses with lesser profit margins for themselves and hence their revenue is less as compared to a bigger firm like Adams Realty.
The author also arrives at the conclusion of which firm is superior on the basis of personal experience. Although personal experience is always very important than theoretical numbers and statistics, the experience that the author derives the conclusion from is not entirely valid since the experience that the author had with Fitch Realty was ten years ago and the one with Adams was only last year. There are countless factors that could have changed over the past ten years which affect the conclusion of deciding a superior firm. The selling market, the condition of the houses that the author sold, the price of the houses, the buying market are just a few of the factors. The situation could've been completely different when the author sold both the houses ten years apart and hence comparing them to arrive at a decision for today may not lead to the expected result.
Thus, I would like to conclude by saying that Adams Realty may be a better firm that Fitch Realty but the reasons provided by the author to arrive at that decision are fallacious and hence the conclusion drawn on the basis of them may lack credebility altogether.
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: 534 350
No. of Characters: 2459 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.807 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.605 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.27 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 59 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.307 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.399 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.615 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.189 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 172, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: part-time
...of the agents of Fitch Realty work only part time. By this the author assumes that Adams ...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 240, Rule ID: SUPERIOR_THAN[1]
Message: The adjective superior is normally used with 'to'.
Suggestion: to
...r assumes that Adams Realty is superior than Fitch Realty. But it is no where stated...
^^^^
Line 3, column 269, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...s superior than Fitch Realty. But it is no where stated that the quality of worker...
^^
Line 5, column 841, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[1]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...mselves and hence their revenue is less as compared to a bigger firm like Adams Re...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, hence, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 25.0 13.6137724551 184% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2506.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 533.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 4.70168855535 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80487177365 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.32513882814 2.78398813304 84% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.405253283302 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 769.5 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => 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: 31.0 22.8473053892 136% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 77.9405771342 57.8364921388 135% => OK
Chars per sentence: 147.411764706 119.503703932 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 31.3529411765 23.324526521 134% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.17647058824 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.314681173963 0.218282227539 144% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.122181068253 0.0743258471296 164% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.118329792056 0.0701772020484 169% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.194587292211 0.128457276422 151% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.116691507044 0.0628817314937 186% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.93 48.3550499002 118% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.57 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.4 11.1389221557 129% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.