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 regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
P#1
A vice president of a large, highly diversified compony thought that it would be better to choose the construction of zeta building rather than alpha building as zeta has lower cost in maintenance and energy consumption, plus it has a stable workforce. His thought might seem tenable, however, there are several questions needed to answer before we make the final conclusion.
P#2
Firstly, is the save of money in maintenance more than construction. In the material we can only know the percentage of the comparation in construction and maintenance fee. However, we don’t know the absolute number. So, if the construction fee are far more than maintenance fee, although the save on the percentage of maintenance fee is higher than construction fee, the comparation of total numbers would be the opposite. So the total number but not the percentage of the construction and maintenance fee is needed to know.
P#3
What’s more, is the advantage of zeta stable? From the material we can only know that zeta had less maintenance fee than alpha last year. However, we cannot conclude that this advantage would always exists only by data of one year. If this scenario occurred only by accident, then the advantage of zeta would vanish and alpha would be an apparently better choice.
P#4
Also, does alpha have a stable workforce too? In the material we can only see that zeta has a stable workforce but we do not know any information of the workforce situation of alpha. If alpha has a stable workforce too, then the advantage of zeta would be weakened.
P#5
Last but not least, will the buildings have the same life span in different region? We know that zeta and alpha have identical floor plan, however, it is also mentioned that zeta and alpha are in different regions, thus natural elements such as climate and so on may be totally different. If the environment where zeta lies in is worse thus zeta’s life span would obviously less than alpha, then although zeta has less maintenance fee, it will go to its end of life earlier than alpha which means more construction fees will be needed and in this case the total cost of alpha may be lower, leading to the fact that alpha would be a better choice.
P#6
As we have discussed above, we can see that there are still many room of doubt and the advantage of zeta is not that reliable. So, if those questions above can be answered, the fact would be more clear and I am greatly convinced that the vice president could make a more wise choice.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 445 350
No. of Characters: 1999 1500
No. of Different Words: 179 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.593 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.492 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.602 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 115 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 85 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.861 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.381 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.381 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.214 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 6, column 200, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'would' requires the base form of the verb: 'exist'
Suggestion: exist
...nclude that this advantage would always exists only by data of one year. If this scena...
^^^^^^
Line 12, column 61, Rule ID: MANY_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun room seems to be countable; consider using: 'many rooms'.
Suggestion: many rooms
... above, we can see that there are still many room of doubt and the advantage of zeta is n...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, apparently, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, so, still, then, thus, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 40.0 55.5748502994 72% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2077.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 438.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 4.74200913242 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57476223824 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63251117633 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.420091324201 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 646.2 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 76.8048575911 57.8364921388 133% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.315789474 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0526315789 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.57894736842 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0798797805335 0.218282227539 37% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0327298324677 0.0743258471296 44% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0473797833547 0.0701772020484 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0493019097316 0.128457276422 38% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0401726210369 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.51 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.3 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 70.0 98.500998004 71% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.