The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.
"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase—and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."
The argument is well presented in the memorandum that the author is at odds with constructing new generating plants due to the predicted low demand. Astonishingly plausible as the statement may sound, scrutiny reveals it suffers from several unsubstantiated assumptions, which, if not justified, will cast doubt on the claim. Therefore, we are inquiring more information about local residents’ attitudes toward new technologies and local population predictions to better evaluate the argument.
To begin with, by citing the marketing efforts of manufacturing companies, the planning department assumes that their strategy will be effective in persuading consumers to purchase more energy-efficient appliances. However, this suggestion may not be true in reality. For example, the prices of new-technology equipment could be higher than old appliances, therefore, local residents may be reluctant to buy such products. Without further evidence about the new appliances’ affordableness, the argument is open to doubt, since we cannot prove the sales of energy-saving products will increase resulting from the marketing attempts. On the contrary, if the statistics from manufacturing companies demonstrate that such a marketing policy is efficient, the assumption will be more robust.
Moreover, the author further informs us there are new technologies available to cut the energy needed for home heating and seems to presume the local residents will adopt these technologies, which give rise to the reduction of energy. While we recognize the merit of this assumption, we still cannot rule out the possibility that these technologies are not applicable to this region. For instance, the solar heating system is requiring a certain period of exposure to the sun every day. Therefore, an area where is raining nearly all the days, such as Seattle, is unlikely to use these technologies and, thus, will not experience the decrease in energy consumption. In such a circumstance, if the local residents assign priority to traditional heating methods because of environmental factors or monetary issues, which are shown above, the prediction will be rendered questionable.
Granted the existing citizens will accept new technologies, which causes the decline in energy consumption per household, it is still too hasty to arrive at the assumption that the total energy usage will maintain at the same level, if not increase, in the following years. As we know, the energy consumption originates from a variety of factors. As a result, we are asking for more evidence to figure out potential population changes in the future. If the regional economy is booming and the city attracts more immigration and companies, especially manufacturing firms, from other places in the country, the assumption will be weakened, because the jump in energy consumption due to the increase in the population could offset the effects of energy-saving appliances. By contrary, new evidence showing the local population will not increase should strengthen the presumption.
To summarize, as I have manifested above, the writer is too precipitous to reach the conclusion that the energy usage will not significantly alter in the future absent taking account of the validity of several unstated assumptions.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- better to say: maybe people will buy more home appliances.
argument 2 -- not exactly. 'readily available' is not equal to 'people will buy for sure'
argument 3 -- OK
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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: 19 15
No. of Words: 501 350
No. of Characters: 2710 1500
No. of Different Words: 256 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.731 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.409 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.085 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 208 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 131 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 95 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.368 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.106 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.531 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.104 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
however, if, may, moreover, so, still, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, for instance, such as, as a result, on the contrary, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 30.0 16.3942115768 183% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2799.0 2260.96107784 124% => OK
No of words: 501.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.58682634731 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.73107062784 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.2371200625 2.78398813304 116% => OK
Unique words: 265.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.528942115768 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 885.6 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 10.0 4.22255489022 237% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.6537337409 57.8364921388 115% => OK
Chars per sentence: 147.315789474 119.503703932 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.3684210526 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.10526315789 5.70786347227 142% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.102711132558 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0321701726699 0.0743258471296 43% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0282163914394 0.0701772020484 40% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0548942007424 0.128457276422 43% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0262063154718 0.0628817314937 42% => 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: 18.1 14.3799401198 126% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 28.17 48.3550499002 58% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.44 12.5979740519 123% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 10.03 8.32208582834 121% => OK
difficult_words: 162.0 98.500998004 164% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.