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.
The prompt made a statement of altering the pest control company, by introducing the statistics of their property loss. Nevertheless, to make the argument potent enough to persuade readers, more evidence is required to strengthen the rationale.
First, they compared two companies at different places. It is obvious that different locations may have various tendency towards pest problems. For instance, nations near equator like Indonesia are full with bugs, people living in there even created lots of delicacy related to bugs; while it would be rare to find any insect under the cold, icy Greenland soil, due to the harsh weather for them to survive. Other factors like humidity or sunshine duration also affects the difficulty for pests to survive and furthermore problems to eradicate them. The memo should provide the weather conditions, and provide statistics concerning the issue of pest control for both locations to evaluate the efficiency for the service from each company.
Next, the prompt should provide the items stocked and destroyed. It is possible that the food stored in different places have different value. For instance, the storage in Palm City consists of branded chocolates and cheese, while in Wintervale most of them are flour and rice, which has much lower value than the other. Also, pest may have different tendency to different foods, which has a direct impact to the difficulty for pest control. Therefore, differentiating the capability of pest control companies by the financial loss is unreasonable; the vice president should provide the detailed stock information to make such assumption.
Last but not least, the company should show the cost by each company. Although the cost is said to be “considerably lower”, the actual price is still uncertain. If the price gap between companies exceeded 10000, the difference of worth of good lost last month, than it would be actually better to remain cooperation with Fly-Away. Also, different places may have uneven consuming price index, such as California and rural states like Nebraska. Therefore the prompt should also take into consideration due to the different pricing standards, to make sure the pricing in different places and companies are compared indifferently.
The argument seems to be persuasive at first by providing statistics. However, before making an emphatic conclusion, evidences stated above is required to be presented to furthermore to convince readers to accept such decision.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 2041 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.233 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.692 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 156 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.526 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.202 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.087 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 251, Rule ID: LOTS_OF_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun delicacy seems to be countable; consider using: 'lots of delicacies'.
Suggestion: lots of delicacies
...gs, people living in there even created lots of delicacy related to bugs; while it would be rare...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 445, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...ifornia and rural states like Nebraska. Therefore the prompt should also take into consid...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, still, then, therefore, while, for instance, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 11.0 28.8173652695 38% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2111.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 390.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.41282051282 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44391917772 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80958372072 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 225.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.576923076923 0.468620217663 123% => OK
syllable_count: 649.8 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.6539858724 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.105263158 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5263157895 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.78947368421 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.203062557929 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0593453539819 0.0743258471296 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0511135012888 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0983098956914 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0580410289865 0.0628817314937 92% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => 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: 9.0 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.