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 homeowner has concluded that Adams Realty is better than Fitch Realty. He based his conclusion on several observations regarding both agent’s staff number and working hours, revenues and previous experiences with both Adams and Fitch Realities regarding their selling speed. However, it seems that the conclusion relies on assumption on which there is no clear evidence, therefore, the argument is flawed.
First, the homeowner assumes the higher the revenue the more successful and superior the real estate company is. However, maybe Fitch Realty initially started as a small business, therefore it contains less real estate agents and provides less working hours, such possibility contradict the assertion regarding its low quality. In addition, maybe the revenue can be calculated differently when taking into account both the staff members number and the working hours in total. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Second, the author is assuming that the fact of less real estate agents who work part-time is a proof that Fitch Realty is inferior to Adams. Nevertheless, Fitch small staff and flexible schedule might boost his agents’ creativity, effort and loyalty to work. Characters that are fundamentally essential in successful work environments. Many studies have shown that companies’ general productivity, is less linked to hours of working, but has strong relationship with the quality of work per hour. Perhaps, in Adams Realty where 40 real estate agents have full time job, they eventually produce less per agent than in Fitch Realty. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Last, the homeowner based his conclusion on previous experiences with both agencies regarding the selling speed for houses he owned. However, the homeowner has not enough evidence to support his position. Maybe, Adams sold his house faster because the market a year ago was more interested and flexible in buying/selling houses than 10 years ago when Fitch sold his another house. If the homeowner did his homework about history of selling houses, he would have found that 10 years ago there was an economic crisis in the country. Or maybe, Fitch took longer to sell his house because it was less attractive than the one sold by Adams. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened
In conclusion, the conclusion as it currently stands, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the homeowner is able to offer further evidence (perhaps in a form of a systematic study), then it would be possible to fully evaluate the validity of the proposed conclusion that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty. Unless additional evidence is provided, his friend and people who want to sell their houses should find this argument unconvincing.
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 477 350
No. of Characters: 2467 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.673 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.172 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.659 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 183 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.682 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.944 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.514 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 595, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...nal argument is significantly weakened. Second, the author is assuming that the ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 567, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled as one.
Suggestion: fulltime
...Realty where 40 real estate agents have full time job, they eventually produce less per a...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 761, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...nal argument is significantly weakened. Last, the homeowner based his conclusion...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, regarding, second, so, then, therefore, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2561.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 476.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38025210084 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67091256922 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82626355716 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481092436975 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 778.5 705.55239521 110% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.1224345548 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.952380952 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6666666667 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.2380952381 5.70786347227 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.220267818406 0.218282227539 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.072828554675 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0880194075403 0.0701772020484 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137412159472 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0465907749497 0.0628817314937 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
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: 14.22 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.38 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.