The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment complex to its manger.
“One month ago, all the showerheads In the first five floors of the Sunnyside Towers complex were modified to restrict maximum water flow to 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 prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The writer predicts that if Sunnyside Corporation applies restricting water flow to all the twenty floors of Sunnyside Tower, then its profit will be increased further. To support this prediction, the writer points out that the change will result in a considerable savings for the company and that no problems with showers have been reported without only a few complaints about low water pressure. However, this line of reasoning suffers from several problems, which render it unconvincing as it stands.
A threshold problem with the argument involves its optimistic perspective on actual water usage of the first five floors where the restriction applied. Yet the letter provides no substantiating evidence for this assumption. Perhaps, lacking reliable evidence of the actual reading, it is entirely possible that the actual usage was not decreased at all or even increased. If residents in the first five floors had not took shower, but bathing regularly, then the water usage would not have been changed. Without considering and ruling out this and other possible scenarios, the writer cannot justifiably.
Secondly, the writer assume that cost of restriction is lower than the revenue of the project. The owner provides no evidence about this assumption. Without evidence to the contrary, it is entirely possible that since costs of the restriction installment is far more expensive than actual revenues. If this is the case, then the profit of the company would be decreased or at least will not be increased further. To put it another way, the writer cannot justifiably conclude that there are some net revenue from the restriction.
Thirdly, the author seems to commit a fallacy confusing indication with reality. The mere fact that only a few complaints was reported does not show that there ‘is’ no other complaints from residents who did not report low water pressure problems. Without substantiating evidence to the contrary it is possible that the not-reporting residents would final the contract and leave the building, which would make the company’s income deteriorated. Without ruling out Hence, the owner fails to convince me that the expansion of restriction would beget positive outcome.
Finally, the author commits a hasty generalization from the first five floors to throughout all twenty floors of the building. This could be the case if there are some evidence for similarity among the residents of the building. However, the owner does not provide such evidence at all, so it is equally possible that, although the first five floor restriction gave considerable success of saving, since the initial cost of the restriction and little or no saving from the other residents, overall savings would not be considerable. Thus, to persuade me, the author must suggest evidence strongly indicating that the water usage of entire residents is similar to that of first five floor residents.
In sum, the owner’s prediction fails to convince me that the recommendation would benefit for the company’s additional profits. To make the argument sound more reasonable, the author must answer the following questions: whether the real water usage of the first five floors was reduced or not, whether the residents really have no complaints except few reporting ones, and whether the residents from the first five floors are representative with respect to their water usage.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- 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: 23 15
No. of Words: 539 350
No. of Characters: 2786 1500
No. of Different Words: 226 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.818 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.169 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.709 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 208 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 162 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 112 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.435 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.131 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.565 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.043 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 419, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'taken'.
Suggestion: taken
...idents in the first five floors had not took shower, but bathing regularly, then the...
^^^^
Line 5, column 530, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... some net revenue from the restriction. Thirdly, the author seems to commit a fa...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, hence, however, if, really, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, at least, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2887.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 539.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.35621521336 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81833721656 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87087033058 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.443413729128 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 882.0 705.55239521 125% => 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: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 10.0 4.22255489022 237% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 68.2527272906 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.52173913 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4347826087 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.39130434783 5.70786347227 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
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: 0.202145607599 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0597677433854 0.0743258471296 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0641820020006 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114021442822 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0460663749073 0.0628817314937 73% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 126.0 98.500998004 128% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.