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 differe

Essay topics:

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."

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 vice-president of a large diversified company is trying to convince why the new building project be given to construction company called Zeta and not to Alpha. The vice-president put forwards three main comparison points and concludes the company should go with Zeta for their new project. The author uses expenses, cost and employee turnover rate as comparison points but while doing so does not provide factual data and sound comparison.

Author put forwards the issue of high energy consumption rate by the building constructed by Zeta but fails to look into different possible reasons the consumption might be high. Building constructed by Zeta might have a server room for the company's website and this might be the reason the energy consumption is high. It is know that the servers keep running continuously all seven days throughout the year and also require lot of cooling because of the heat generated by the servers. This might not be the case for the building constructed by Alpha and this would lead to less energy consumption buy the building.

Second point that author points out is the total cost for building constructed by Zeta been 30 percent more in-spite both the buildings having exactly the same floor plan. The biggest concern here is that the year in which the buildings were constructed. It might be possible that the economy was down when Alpha constructed the building and the value for the land at that time was low too which can lead to low costs. But when Zeta constructed the building economy was good and it was different year and the expenses went up which lead to increase in costs. The popularity of that particular area might have went up which leads to increase in rent and increase in rates of construction too. Difference in use of building material can lead to high or low construction costs. Zeta might have used premium raw material which caused more while Alpha did not.

Author also tells us that the turnover rate of employee at Alpha building is very less so the power consumption should remain more or less constant. It might be possible that employees of building created by Alpha might be working off-site or there are lot of employees who travel and are not present in the building throughout the day. This can lead to less power consumption and can explain the low energy bills. Also employee turn over has no relation to the building in which they work specially when both the buildings have exact same floor plan thus making this point of author vague.

If the author provides more data on the points discussed above then a sound decision can be made about which company is better and who should get the new building contract.

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Average: 7 (2 votes)
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Comments

Sentence: It is know that the servers keep running continuously all seven days throughout the year and also require lot of cooling because of the heat generated by the servers.
Description: The token is is not usually followed by a verb, base: uninflected present, imperative or infinitive
Suggestion: Refer to is and know

and it was different year
and it was a different year

Sentence: The popularity of that particular area might have went up which leads to increase in rent and increase in rates of construction too.
Description: A verb 'to have', uninflected present tense, infinitive or is not usually followed by a verb, past tense
Suggestion: Refer to have and went

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argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2199 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.76 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.511 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.316 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.275 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.474 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.571 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5