The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment building to its manager.
"One month ago, all the showerheads on the first five floors of Sunnyside Towers were modified to restrict the water flow to approximately one-third of its original flow. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, restricting water flow throughout all the twenty floors of Sunnyside Towers will increase our profits further."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument claims that the restriction of the water flow through all the shower heads of the first five floors of Sunnyside Towers will reduce the costs for the organization and thus bolster their profits. Therefore, the argument concludes by saying that the restriction of the water flow should be adopted to all the twenty floors of the building. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors on which the conclusion can be evaluated. Moreover, it manipulates facts and conveys a distorted view of the situation. The conclusion of the argument relies on several unstated assumptions and thus it is unconvincing.
The argument readily assumes that the restriction of the water flow to approximately one third of the original power to all the shower heads of the first five floors will induce the Sunnyside corporation to cut expenses for water usage. However, more evidence is needed in order to conclude so. Firstly, the argument assume that people will use water for the same length of time and therefore, since the water flow is reduced, the associated cost will be lower. Nonetheless, it is necessary to answer the following question: will people use water for more time since its flow is now reduced? If this is the case then, it could happen that the lower costs associated to the reduced water flow has been not compensated because of the lengthier time that people use water. In addition, the society based its conclusion on the increased profits merely on intuition since no results on water usage are available yet. The argument could have been much clearer if it has mentioned whether people has increased the time of water usage after its flow restriction and if it has based the effectiveness on profits of the water restriction of actual data.
Secondly, the argument generalizes the possible positive effect of water flow restriction of the first five floors to the entire building. Indeed, the argument concludes by advocating for the adaptation of the restriction to the twenty floors of the building based on the assumption that since the restriction has been successful in the first five floors it will be in the entire building as well. However, the generalization is faulty because of two main reasons. There is no data which shows the effectiveness of the restriction on profits after the introduction in the five floors, thus there is no guarantee that it will work for the entire building. Secondly, how does the company know if people will not use more water from other sources? For instance, from sinks? If the argument had provided evidence that the five floors policy was effective, and that people will not increase water usage from other sources the conclusion would have been clearer.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed by the above-mentioned reasons and it is therefore unconvincing. In order to assess the merits of a certain decision, it is necessary to have full knowledge of all the contributing factors. Thus, the conclusion is still open to debate.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 30 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 504 350
No. of Characters: 2468 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.738 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.897 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.695 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.909 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.024 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.909 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.342 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.502 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 275, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...the conclusion is still open to debate.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, moreover, nonetheless, second, secondly, so, still, then, therefore, third, thus, well, for instance, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 34.0 16.3942115768 207% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2524.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 504.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.00793650794 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.73813722054 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77667495115 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.39880952381 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 792.9 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.140535892 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.727272727 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9090909091 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.36363636364 5.70786347227 129% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.235711735529 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0719244115345 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0768192171361 0.0701772020484 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136456243302 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.068727434603 0.0628817314937 109% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => 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: 12.07 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.02 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.