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."
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.
With the aim of saving construction costs while meeting the electricity needs, the author suggests it would be unnecessary for an electric power company to invest in new generating plants. Nevertheless, while it may be true that circumventing a redundant construction would be cost-efficient, the connection between the given facts and the conclusion drawn is not cogently justified in the paragraph.
To begin with, the author relies on several surveys to conclude that a trend of energy conservation has started to prevail among people. However, since the details of how these surveys were conducted are not provided, it is uncertain whether the validity of them holds. If the sample group for these researches was not chosen randomly or the questions asked were misleading, the results of these might be unwarranted. In addition, the composition regarding age, gender, or income level of people who joined the survey was unclear, hence undercutting the grounds of these results to be generalized to an augmented group of people. As a consequence, without ruling out these possible flaws during the survey process, the outcome of them should not be used as a bedrock of evidence.
Moreover, given the fact that the energy efficiency has been largely enhanced for manufactured home appliances, the author asserts an unlikely expansion of electricity demand. But the reduction of energy consumption of single devices does not necessarily precipitate a decrease in family electricity usage. With the development of technology, people nowadays tend to possess more personal electronic devices, such as cell phones, iPads, personal computer, and FitBits, just to name a few. Accordingly, the per capita energy consumption might not decrease even with an increased efficiency. Also, due to the population growth, the total demand for electricity could continue to increase in the following years.
Last but not least, the author fallaciously contends that the existing electric generating plants would be capable of meeting the demand for the future, simply due to the observation that they have worked well in the past twenty years. Howbeit, this hastily drawn belief is groundless. For instance, chances are that machines inside these plants are more than worn out after twenty years of use. Consequently, a construction of new plant would be required to cater for the electricity generation in substitution of the old ones that break down.
Taking into all the arguments above, it is evident that the author has not provided tenable and persuasive arguments to support the linkage between the evidence and a decline in electricity demand, hereby invalidating the recommendation for the company to not construct new generating plants.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
also need to argue:
Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating.
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 429 350
No. of Characters: 2252 1500
No. of Different Words: 235 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.551 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.249 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.902 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.235 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.795 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.824 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.289 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.544 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, but, consequently, hence, however, if, may, moreover, nevertheless, regarding, so, well, while, for instance, in addition, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2316.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 429.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.3986013986 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55107846309 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98910128653 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.55710955711 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 725.4 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.6217452685 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.235294118 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.2352941176 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.64705882353 5.70786347227 169% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.101809903486 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0343770796466 0.0743258471296 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0347217287664 0.0701772020484 49% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0510628590991 0.128457276422 40% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0339740975704 0.0628817314937 54% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 37.64 48.3550499002 78% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.34 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.62 8.32208582834 116% => OK
difficult_words: 129.0 98.500998004 131% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.