The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of the Juniper Cafe, a small local coffee shop in the downtown area of small American city:
"We must reduce overhead here at the cafe. Instead of opening at 6 a.m weekdays, we will now open 8 a.m. On weekends, we will only be open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The decrease in hours of operations will help save money because we won't be paying for utilities, employee wages, or other operating costs during the hours we are closed. This is the best strategy for us to save money and remain in business without having to eliminate jobs."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to asses the reasonableness of both the prediction and argument upon which it is based. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The owner of Juiper Café, is suggesting to limit the hours of operations during weekdays and weekends, and as a result pay less money for utilities and employees and predicts to save more money. However, the prediction relies on several assumptions for which there is no evidence and therefore the argument is flawed. In order to validate the owner’s prediction, three questions must be answered.
First, will the costumers, who used to come to Juiper Café early in the morning during weekdays, be able to come later during the new hours of operation? Maybe, during the week days, some costumers could visit the café only on their commuting to work, in this case shutting the café on those hours will lead them to find another alternative. Perhaps, for morning people and ethlete costumers, this café was perceived as a place with flexible hours, giving them the chance to grap a cop of coffe or have an early breakfast before heading to their morning routines. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the prediction drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Second, are the costs during the old schedule higher than the revenue? In weekedns, where people have a vast free time to spend outside, maybe the majority of the Juiper Café’s revenue was made during weekends, and limiting times of operation will decrease the earnings. Perhaps the new schedule will give the idea to people that they are limited in their time to spend in this café, and therefore will look for other flexible scedules in other cafés. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the prediction drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Finally, If either of these scenarios has merit, then the prediction drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
In conclusion, the argument as it currently stands is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the owner is able to answer the three questions above and offer more evidence, perhaps in the form of a survey or a systematic study, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed prediction that the decrease in the hours of operations will be better economically. Unless additional evidence is provided, the readers of the memorandum will find the argument unpersuasive.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 383 350
No. of Characters: 1884 1500
No. of Different Words: 177 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.424 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.919 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.625 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 101 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.533 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.014 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.355 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, look, may, second, so, then, therefore, in conclusion, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1961.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 383.0 441.139720559 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12010443864 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.42384287591 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77904927796 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.483028720627 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 615.6 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.785196105 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.733333333 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.5333333333 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.33333333333 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => 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: 0.0466635621703 0.218282227539 21% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0178520212304 0.0743258471296 24% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0201387677507 0.0701772020484 29% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0275451715143 0.128457276422 21% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0179116101086 0.0628817314937 28% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.26 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 82.0 98.500998004 83% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.