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.
Pests are menaces to food storage warehouses. They walk all over the food, eat bits and portions of it, and renders them absolutely unsaleable. That is why it is important for food distribution companies to hire the best yet most affordable pest control company. A particular food company hired Fly-Away Pest Control Company to service their warehouse in Palm City and Buzzoff Pest Control in Wintervale. Although the former company provided services at a lower price, the Vice President noted more damage found in the Palm City warehouse than in Wintervale, thus, coming to the conclusion that they would save more money with the latter company. In order to check the argument, one must consider several pieces of evidence before coming to such a conclusion.
First of all, the Vice President should investigate the maintenance level of each warehouse. In other words, how well are the conditions of both Palm City and Wintervale warehouses being taken care of? Let us say the managers of Wintervale are investing more time and effort in keeping their warehouse clean. They hired more cleaning staff, have scheduled for more cleaning sessions, and are checking more regularly on the conditions of any equipment they may have, compared to the other managers. This is a critical piece of evidence because less maintenance means greater ease for pests to come in. It also means that the loss of damage was not due to the efforts of the pest control company but to the lack of maintenance and care from the Palm City managers. Even if the food distribution company were to switch to Buzzoff for their Palm City location, if it is not being taken care of then the pests will continue to cause chaos. With that in mind, the evidence would weaken the argument.
In addition, the food distribution must analyze the size of the pest population within the city. If Palm City is located a larger pest population, then it would make more sense for more damages to be found in this site. A larger city population can equate to a larger number of pests evading the warehouse. Again, this is a critical piece of evidence because switching pest control companies would not matter in the end. In fact, it may lead to worse outcomes. If Buzzoff cannot nor have the equipment to fend off Palm City’s large pest population, compared to Fly-Away Pest, then there could be damages exceeding $20,000 and the company would lose even more money. Therefore, the argument would be weakened.
Before making the switch for their Palm City location, the Vice President must launch an investigation that considers a few factors. First, the Vice President and the rest of the company must consider if the warehouses are at similar levels of maintenance. Then, they must analyze the pest population within the overall city. Such factors must be considered if the company wants to hire the best pest control company at the most affordable cost.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 25 15
No. of Words: 494 350
No. of Characters: 2366 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.714 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.789 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.481 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.76 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.468 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.56 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.443 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.088 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, may, so, then, therefore, thus, well, in addition, in fact, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2429.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 494.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91700404858 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71445763274 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56134315972 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.449392712551 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 774.0 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 48.7063691934 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 97.16 119.503703932 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.76 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.4 5.70786347227 77% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.36357841618 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110955377374 0.0743258471296 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.101218775906 0.0701772020484 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.25165766275 0.128457276422 196% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.113224292307 0.0628817314937 180% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.6 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.49 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => 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.