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.
This letter recommends Adams Realty over its competitor Fitch based on its larger scale, better business success and an anecdote of fast selling with Adams. It makes multiple assumptions that are unwarranted, which threatens the validity of this recommendation.
First of all, the author's assumption that their own experiences with Adams and Fitch are representative of an average person's experience is unwarranted. They assumed that the two selling experiences that happened 9 years apart are directly comparable, and hence are telling for the service quality of the two firms. However, many extraneous factors apart from their service can differ in the two scenarios. For example, the two homes the author sold could be of extremely varied attractiveness to the market. Therefore, their anecdote does not guarantee that the friend would sell their home faster if they choose Adams over Fitch.
Secondly, the author makes the assumption that the agents in the two companies operate at the same efficiency, which is not necessarily true. The author uses the higher number of employee and their higher working hours at Adams to support their claim that the friend would get a faster and better deal. However, there is no correlation between employee number and the total amount of effort, as the Fitch's agents may have a higher efficacy, and hence get a better job done within a shorter time. Especially considering the fact that Fitch achieved a comparable home sales to Adams with only half of the employee. Therefore, the friend may not get more attention or better service from Adams, even if they outnumber Fitch with their total working hours.
Lastly, the author's claim that homes listed with Adams sell at a better price is based on the assumption that a higher revenue means higher individual price, which is problematic. Nowhere in the letter provides convincing support for a good individual home price with Adams. Although Adams' revenue is higher than Fitch, it can be a result of a higher number of homes sold, rather than a higher individual price. The friend will not necessarily get a better price for their home if they choose Adams over Fitch.
Therefore, the recommendations outlined in this letter are often built upon unreliable assumptions that need further support with evidence. The author needs to sustain the generalisability of their anecdote, the equal work efficiency of each individual staff member from the two companies, as well as the better price at which each individual home is sold with Adams.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 227, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... two selling experiences that happened 9 years apart are directly comparable, and...
^^
Discourse Markers used:
['first', 'hence', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'therefore', 'well', 'apart from', 'for example', 'as well as', 'first of all']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.269639065817 0.25644967241 105% => OK
Verbs: 0.114649681529 0.15541462614 74% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0997876857749 0.0836205057962 119% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0573248407643 0.0520304965353 110% => OK
Pronouns: 0.036093418259 0.0272364105082 133% => OK
Prepositions: 0.127388535032 0.125424944231 102% => OK
Participles: 0.0233545647558 0.0416121511921 56% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.81610242096 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Infinitives: 0.00849256900212 0.026700313972 32% => Some infinitives wanted.
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.112526539278 0.113004496875 100% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0169851380042 0.0255425247493 66% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0148619957537 0.0127820249294 116% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2574.0 2731.13054187 94% => OK
No of words: 413.0 446.07635468 93% => OK
Chars per words: 6.23244552058 6.12365571057 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50803742585 4.57801047555 98% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.377723970944 0.378187486979 100% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.239709443099 0.287650121315 83% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.174334140436 0.208842608468 83% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.135593220339 0.135150697306 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81610242096 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 207.018472906 92% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.462469733656 0.469332199767 99% => OK
Word variations: 49.9989025772 52.1807786196 96% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 22.9444444444 23.2022227129 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 37.3798073831 57.7814097925 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.0 141.986410481 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9444444444 23.2022227129 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.833333333333 0.724660767414 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 46.9153887544 51.9672348444 90% => OK
Elegance: 2.02040816327 1.8405768891 110% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.333632730928 0.441005458295 76% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.113470981132 0.135418324435 84% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0714916589601 0.0829849096947 86% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.57848517159 0.58762219726 98% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.115367329666 0.147661913831 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.142985148571 0.193483328276 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0377947939751 0.0970749176394 39% => The sentences are too close to each other.
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.386022105454 0.42659136922 90% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.113108981373 0.0774707102158 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.226918208327 0.312017818177 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0313023256688 0.0698173142475 45% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.33743842365 144% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.87684729064 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.82512315271 104% => OK
Positive topic words: 11.0 6.46551724138 170% => OK
Negative topic words: 1.0 5.36822660099 19% => More negative topic words wanted.
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 16.0 14.657635468 109% => OK
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations to cover all aspects.