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 argument presented here by the writer that the Adams Reality Estate firm is better than Fitch’s, is contingent upon several dubious arguments and questionable analogy making the conclusion tenuous. The writer fails to provide persuasive evidences and thus renders the argument unconvincing.
First and foremost, the writer assumes since the Adam’s Firm has more number of agents, it is superior. Such inferences are ridiculous as there is no evidence regarding the efficacy of these workers. For any firm to be superior to other the quality of the work should be given weightage rather than just the number of employees. it may be possible that less number of efficient workers outperform large number of workers.
Secondly, the writer tries to infer from the fact that the Adam’s revenue being greater than that of the Fitch’s, without giving deliberate attention to the fact that the Adam have more number of agent thus it is possible than even with inferior performance their cumulative revenues soars up. Also, nothing is being said about what kind of revenue is being considered, is it the gross revenue or the profits of the firm, it is necessary to consider the cost and wages while comparing revenue. Thus it is required to compare the net profit of firm per number of agents which is more deciding factor. Another flaw in the argument is that only average revenue of one year which is not enough to compare the performance of the firms in a long-time frame. Thus a longer time frame would make it conducive to decide on this.
Thirdly, the writer tries to correlate the firm’s performance 10 years before with now. Obviously, the conditions ten years ago and now are not same, thus comparing this would lead to fallacious inferences. Moreover, the house being sold ten before and now are different, hence it would be ridiculous to compare the performance of the firms without comparing the houses in the question. It is possible that the house tried to be sold ten years ago faced problem due to inherent defects.
We can thus conclude that the writer does not present a cogent argument and tit rife with baseless assumption which make it difficult to admit. The writer can add the necessary evidences to make the argument more persuasive.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1838 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.824 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.48 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 98 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.812 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.394 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.602 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 336, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: It
...ther than just the number of employees. it may be possible that less number of eff...
^^
Line 3, column 504, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...cost and wages while comparing revenue. Thus it is required to compare the net profi...
^^^^
Line 3, column 762, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...ance of the firms in a long-time frame. Thus a longer time frame would make it condu...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, if, may, moreover, regarding, second, secondly, so, third, thirdly, thus, while, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1903.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 381.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.99475065617 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41805628031 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66975971239 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.511811023622 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 603.0 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.2040320129 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.941176471 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.4117647059 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.35294117647 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.109540908294 0.218282227539 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0364121410079 0.0743258471296 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0553205048503 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0628964124036 0.128457276422 49% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.042527619153 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.3 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.96 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.37 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.