The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution
company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest
control services at our fast-food warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that
over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff
Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years, continued to service our
warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been
destroyed by pest damage. Even though the price charged by Fly-Away is considerably lower,
our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the
argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In this argument the author concludes that Buzzoff is a preferable choice over Fly-Away for pest control services. The general reason offered to support this conclusion is that less worth of food in the care of Buzzoff had been destroyed by pest damage. However, this argument is unconvincing because its relies on a variety of dubious assumptions.
First of all, as mentioned in the argument, Buzzoff appeared to make the company suffer less by minimizing the damage to $10,000 worth of food compared to Fly-Away’s $20,000 last month. However, this evidence is insufficient to establish the claim in the question. The overall value of food stored in two different pest control companies were unknown. Consider an extreme case that total food value stored in Buzzoff’ warehouse was only $11,000 while it was worth $100,000 under Fly-Away’s services, in this case, Buzzoff allowed more than 90% of the food to be tainted by pest yet Fly-Away did a relatively superb job in minimizing the damage to only 20%.
Secondly, the argument only informed us about condition last month. How could we infer the overall performance only from the data of a single month? The Buzzoff may have performed better than Fly-Away in last 30 days, but it also could be an underdog if we magnified the period to a quarter or even a year. Again, in an extreme case, what if Fly-Away only suffered the loss last month and remained perfectly for the previous 150 days, while Buzzoff constantly allowed same amount of loss in 6months. In this case Fly-Away would be a preferable option.
Last but not least, two companies’ warehouses were settled in different cities, environmental characteristics such as number of pasts and the spices of bugs around two cities may have been different. Perhaps there were relatively more bugs in Palm City, or perhaps the kind of pasts in Palm City were more likely to cause damage to the food. It wouldn’t be surprised that Buzzoff performed better when it had an advantage over Fly-Away in location.
While on the surface this argument may make some logical sense, it lacks a great deal of information that is integral to identifying if this is a valid decision. To strengthen it the author must provide clear details of the food value stored in each company’s warehouse, environmental features of each city and the long-term performance of each company or any other information that can proof that neither of the two companies had unfair advantages.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 17 15
No. of Words: 415 350
No. of Characters: 1993 1500
No. of Different Words: 202 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.513 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.802 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.602 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 143 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.093 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.568 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, kind of, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2063.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 414.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98309178744 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51076378781 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73628429526 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.495169082126 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 630.0 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 70.8316391683 57.8364921388 122% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.352941176 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3529411765 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.94117647059 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.226422928214 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0745700127253 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673673677579 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127417052788 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0563148937721 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.9 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.22 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => 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: 66.67 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.