The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two different regions. The buildings were erected by two different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Even though the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build, and its expenses for maintenance last year were twice those of the building constructed by Alpha. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been higher than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Such data, plus the fact that Alpha has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, indicate that we should use Alpha rather than Zeta for our contemplated new building project."
In this memo, the vice president of the company claims that the company has to contract with the construction company Alpha rather than, Zeta for the new building. To support her argument, she compares one building which was constructed by Alpha with another building which was constructed by Zeta. The building which was constructed by Zeta was more price than by Alpha and the energy consumption of building which was constructed by Zeta have more increased every year. Also, she added a fact that the Alpha’s employees are more loyal to their company. Careful scrutiny reveals that this argument has several problems.
To begin with, based on the fact that the energy consumption of the building constructed by Zeta is higher than by Alpha, the author assumes that the cause of the higher cost for electricity is the difference in the ability of two construction company. However, there could other reasons. For example, employees who worked in Zeta’s building used more electricity for some reasons. Or, the fee for electricity in the region, where Zeta’s building is, is higher than in other regions.
Until she gives us specific data about the main reason for the higher fee of Zeta’s building, this argument is not persuasive.
Secondly, based on the fact the cost for maintenance of Zeta’s building is twice of the building constructed by Alpha last year, she hastily assumes that this tendency will maintain in the future or is a common case. However, there are no such guarantees. In that, at the year, the building constructed by Zeta could be damaged by natural disasters or suddenly need some repairs. If these are true, we cannot be convinced by this argument.
Finally, even if we admit that these problems came from the difference of ability of two company, this argument includes another wrong reasoning. The author hastily assumes that the ability of two company has not changed as time has passed. Common sense tells us that a company’s ability can increase or decrease. If Zeta has overtaken Alpha, or even, been superior to it, it is improper to work with Alpha. If she cannot explain why she thinks the Zeta is inferior to Alpha, this argument is still not cogent.
To summarize, this argument is still dubious as it stands. To make this argument more reasonable, the vise president of the company has to show the exact reason of discrepancy of energy consumption and has to explain why she thinks the last year’s cost for maintenance is not a unique case. To evaluate better, we have to know the present ability of two companies, Alpha and Zeta.
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 437 350
No. of Characters: 2077 1500
No. of Different Words: 176 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.572 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.753 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.495 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.864 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.407 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.206 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 10, column 297, 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.
...t for maintenance is not a unique case. To evaluate better, we have to know the pr...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, however, if, second, secondly, so, still, as to, for example, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2182.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 437.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 4.99313501144 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57214883401 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69917754813 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.427917620137 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 59.2746269913 57.8364921388 102% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.1818181818 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8636363636 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.09090909091 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.208220730324 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.06568793165 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.06004177954 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112545398001 0.128457276422 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0526911635649 0.0628817314937 84% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => 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: 11.66 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.69 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => 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: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.