The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.
"A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals."
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 presented argument rests on a large number of unstated assumptions, and thus requires lot of evidence to be presented to verify these assumptions before taking any actions. The argument references a natiowide survey, but does not mention the details of the survey, number of participants, relevance of topic of survey etc. Also, the argument presents and uses some part of the result from the survey vaguely, like mentioning preference of "large" family room and kitchen, without any reference to what "large" means. The argument also gives a comparison with a national average for prices of houses, but does not justify the relevance of its application here, and does not give sufficient details about what the average measures, to justify a comparison. If the national average is taken using all houses in the country and the competitors construct luxury homes, the comparison becomes irrelevant, as anyway the prices will be above the national average, regardless of any special feature added. This casts doubt on effect of the special feature, i.e. large family rooms and kitchen.
The applicablity of any observation to the competitors is not well justified to apply suitably the company. There are a lot of factors like construction quality, size of the firms, locality of the projects, facilities provided etc. that could make a difference between the two firms, and make any observation for one firm not necessarily applicable for the other. Thus, it is not all necessary that the inclusion of larger living rooms and kitchen would boost the sales and profits of the firm, as the evidence required to support the claim is inadequate. Also, the inclusion of state-of-the-art kitchens in any house is another inference made, which is not justified properly. Even if we assume that larger family rooms and kitchens as a whole increase buyers' preference, individual effect of each change is not stated and thus cannot be assumed to positive.
Another side to be considered is the targeted customer base of the firm. The argument references to some buyer feedback regarding the lower need for a dining room. No details regarding the buyers like economic position, locality of the construction scheme, cost of the bought houses, the time when the feedback was received are not mentioned. These are critical factors which can make the feedback valid or invalid. It is assumed by the firm without stating that the buyers are similar to the ones they are targeting for their future schemes, and have assumed validity of their feedback.
Thus, variety of crucial factors are assumed without stating in the argument, and thus can make the argument invalid if any of the assumptions made do not hold.
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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 444 350
No. of Characters: 2205 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.59 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.966 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.618 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.766 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.526 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 33, Rule ID: LARGE_NUMBER_OF[1]
Message: Specify a number, remove phrase, or simply use 'many' or 'numerous'
Suggestion: many; numerous
The presented argument rests on a large number of unstated assumptions, and thus requires...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 542, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...erence to what 'large' means. The argument also gives a comparison with a...
^^^
Line 3, column 813, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... individual effect of each change is not stated and thus cannot be assumed to pos...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, anyway, but, if, regarding, so, thus, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2287.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 443.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.1625282167 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58776254615 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84350020736 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.498871331828 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 741.6 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.662873218 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.055555556 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.6111111111 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.66666666667 5.70786347227 47% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.126684386643 0.218282227539 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0406188879133 0.0743258471296 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0405592393996 0.0701772020484 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.062138574461 0.128457276422 48% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0567841278723 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.94 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.0 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.