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.
The author suggested to his or her friend to choose Adams Realty for selling the house due to more agents, higher total revenue and faster turnover rate performed by Adams Realty compared to the competitor Fitch Realty. Though the reasons may seem plausible from the beginning, lots of unwarranted assumptions should be examined further which I am going to explain as follows.
First of all, housing sales is a highly customized service, and one of the key successful factors usually lies in the house types that match with the sellers’ needs, which this information is not mentioned at all. Without knowing the different types of houses are mainly sold by Adams and Fitch respectively, it is premature to claim that which property firm is suitable to the needs of the authors’ friend. In other words, even though Adams Realty does perform well in all the aspects that the author quotes, it doesn’t guarantee that the authors’ friend get better service since it is unknown what types of house that Adams Realty are good at selling. It is highly possible that the author’s friend would like to sell a country house but Adams Realty purly focuses on the city houses. Therefore, the information shared by the author may seem appealing, but they are not critical or relevant to make the suitable decision for the author’s friend.
Secondly, what if even the information that the author shared is questionable? It will further harm the credibility of the claim by the author. For example, when citing the selling time of two companies, the author used his own experience that happened ten years ago without mentioning if there is any progress or difference during these ten year periods. It is not difficult to imagine lots of things can change after ten years, so even if the selling cycle is longer for Fitch before, it can’t indicate the same pattern for now unless more information is revealed. Hence, the time difference between the author’s experience and the present condition weakens the validity of the author’s information about these two companies.
Another critical missing part is that the numbers claimed by the author say nothing about the service quality. In other words, quantity can’t guarantee quality. For instance, given that there are more agents in Adams Realty, it is unclear whether their selling quality is higher or not. Perhaps the agents in Fitch Realty, though with less amounts and part-time working mode, are all local residents with intense social networks to better locate potential buyers. Consequently, more qualitative information about these two companies should be provided before any effective recommendation to be made.
In conclusion, the irrelevance of the information shared by the author, and the incorrect reference due to time difference, as well as the pure emphasis of quantitative information all make the author’s conclusion be easily challenged.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 474 350
No. of Characters: 2371 1500
No. of Different Words: 230 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.666 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.002 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 186 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.138 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.558 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 729, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... information about these two companies. Another critical missing part is that th...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 336, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun amounts is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...the agents in Fitch Realty, though with less amounts and part-time working mode, are...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, first, hence, if, may, second, secondly, so, therefore, well, for example, for instance, in conclusion, as well as, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2454.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 473.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.18816067653 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66353547975 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7013948379 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.513742071882 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 750.6 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.7425373298 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.333333333 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2777777778 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.05555555556 5.70786347227 159% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.157467123461 0.218282227539 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0525845214442 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0709879832472 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0921039935216 0.128457276422 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0763579563584 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.12 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.97 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 121.0 98.500998004 123% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.5 12.3882235529 149% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.