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 given passage compares two real estate firms, Adams and Fitch, on the basis of statistical data and concludes that the former is a better option to sell a property sooner, and at a good price. The analysis has been performed on characteristics such as number of real estate agents, whether they work part-time or full time, average revenue generated and the amount of time taken by each of the firms to sell the house.
While they are valid parameters to test while looking for a firm to sell your house, these are just mathematical data whose underlying cause/contribution should be examined to come to an accurate decision. For example, the passage assumes that the efficiency of the firm is directly proportional to the number of employees (which may or may not be true) but measuring the overall efficiency of the firm would serve as a better judgement criteria. Similarly, even though the revenues generated by Adams is more than that of Fitch their profits of the former could be much lower than that of the latter. Let us assume that Adams and Fitch's revenues $2 million and $1 million (since Adams revenues was twice as Fitchs' as stated in the passage) sold 10 houses and Fitch sold 3; in this case, the average profit of Adams is $200,000 per house while that of Fitch would be $333,333. The assumption that higher revenue means better profit per each house is inherently flawed in nature.
Along the same lines of logic, instead of comparing the average sale price of the firms it is much wiser to compare the buy rate (the amount the customer bought the house) and the amount it was sold for. For example, if the house that costed $150,000 was sold for $168,00 by Adams and the house that costed $100,000 was sold for $144,000 by Fitch then it would mean that the customers of Fitch acquired a better price for their house than that of Adams, regardless of their annual revenue or the number of houses sold.
Lastly, the time taken by the firm to would not have a significant impact on the overall satisfaction on the customer if he/she earned a profit of $44,000 instead of just $18,000. Thus, the reasoning made by the passage for the conclusion serves a minor purpose in determining the correct firm to choose, it is inadequate. The assumptions made by the passage are weak, therefore, the above alternative clauses should be considered for evaluation.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 12 15
No. of Words: 416 350
No. of Characters: 1907 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.516 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.584 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.425 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 81 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 48 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 34.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.664 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.606 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 318, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled as one.
Suggestion: fulltime
... agents, whether they work part-time or full time, average revenue generated and the amou...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 645, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...us assume that Adams and Fitchs revenues million and million since Adams revenue...
^^
Line 5, column 647, Rule ID: NODT_DOZEN[1]
Message: Use simply: 'a million'.
Suggestion: a million
... assume that Adams and Fitchs revenues million and million since Adams revenues was t...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 658, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t Adams and Fitchs revenues million and million since Adams revenues was twice a...
^^
Line 5, column 660, Rule ID: NODT_DOZEN[1]
Message: Use simply: 'a million'.
Suggestion: a million
...Adams and Fitchs revenues million and million since Adams revenues was twice as Fitch...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, lastly, look, may, similarly, so, then, therefore, thus, while, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1946.0 2260.96107784 86% => OK
No of words: 412.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.72330097087 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50530610838 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.51679250424 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.468446601942 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 604.8 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 34.0 22.8473053892 149% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 56.9134332903 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 162.166666667 119.503703932 136% => OK
Words per sentence: 34.3333333333 23.324526521 147% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.75 5.70786347227 136% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => 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: 0.151677710281 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0572300013024 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0633254149455 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0972045424138 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0642188606015 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.0 14.3799401198 125% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.43 48.3550499002 94% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.69 12.5979740519 85% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.5 12.3882235529 157% => OK
gunning_fog: 15.6 11.1389221557 140% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.