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.
Here we read an advice from a homeowner who is more experienced in the house selling issues to a friend who is planning to go to sell his home. As we understand there are two real estate firms in their town-Adams Realty and Fitch Realty-, and a homeowner compares these two firms regarding to their suitability for his friend’s budget. However ,his argument is not logical from the following aspects:
First of all, when we compare two firms that are doing same work, these two things should be comparable at first. It seems that homeowner makes a comparison from different perspectives but there is something missing that homeowner doesn’t take into an account the time dimension when he makes this comparison. If there is any time dimension in a comparison between two things, these two things are no longer comparable. Ten year ago and last year are very different from each other. So we cannot conclude that Adams Realty is quicker than Fitch Realty.
Secondly, homeowner presumes that if Adams Realty has a higher revenue, then selling a house via this realty makes you better. However, we don’t know the features of the houses and location of the houses that these two realties sold. If the houses that are sold with Adams realty are generally at the seaside or they have more comfortable characteristics, it is natural that their prices are higher. Maybe these seaside houses’ values are tree times higher than the houses that Fitch Realty sold but homeowner sees just the final averaged revenue and makes his advice in favour of the Adams Realty. So, it is not logical to reach such conclusion directly.
Finally, it is true that Fitch Realty’s revenue is half of the Adams Realty but there are 25 part-time agents in there compared to 40 full-time agents in the Adams Realty. Actually when we keep everything else constant but the total number of agents that are working in these firms, we should have had more than three times revenue in Adams Realty but we just have 2 times higher revenue. This is actually a supporting argument in favour of Fitch Realty, but homeowner’s approach is missing in that regard.
All in all, to be able to make a comparison between two things we should be sure that these two things are comparable by considering time,size and location dimension at first and we should read the mathematical data more carefully. Sometimes data can be misleading if you don’t have an expert glasses to read it correctly.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 425 350
No. of Characters: 1983 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.54 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.666 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.465 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 87 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.464 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.889 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.568 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.186 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 14, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[1]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'advice'.
Suggestion: advice
Here we read an advice from a homeowner who is more experience...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 349, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...ty for his friend's budget. However ,his argument is not logical from the fol...
^^
Line 3, column 189, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...mparison from different perspectives but there is something missing that homeowne...
^^
Line 5, column 425, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...r prices are higher. Maybe these seaside houses' values are tree times high...
^^
Line 5, column 450, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e these seaside houses' values are tree times higher than the houses that F...
^^
Line 5, column 563, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sees just the final averaged revenue and makes his advice in favour of the Adams ...
^^
Line 9, column 138, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , size
...hings are comparable by considering time,size and location dimension at first and we ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, finally, first, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, first of all, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 49.0 28.8173652695 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2072.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 421.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 4.9216152019 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52971130743 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68576871108 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.463182897862 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 648.0 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 0.0 8.76447105788 0% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.7636633502 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.882352941 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.7647058824 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.58823529412 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.290348618851 0.218282227539 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.107628445654 0.0743258471296 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.106699070049 0.0701772020484 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.174836408525 0.128457276422 136% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.094691180032 0.0628817314937 151% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.55 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.13 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.