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.
The writer of the argument concludes that three electric generating plants would be enough for the need of city and the city doesn’t need another generating plant because not only home owners eager to conserve energy, but also, manufacturers make appliances that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago; however this conclusion/ recommendation cannot be accepted as it is in that it rests on a number of premises all of which can be challenged in one way or another.
The first problem with the argument is that the writer refers to surveys but does not indicate how many people took part in the study reported. As you know, in research studies the greater the number of the people in the sample, the more reliable and valid the findings are. Maybe in this study only ten people participated; hence, the findings of such a study are neither reliable nor valid. Even if it is assumed that enough people took part in the study, there is still another problem with the sample. In a research study, the findings can be generalized to the target population if the sample used is representative of the concerned population in terms of age, sex, social class, culture, etc; however, in this argument there is no evidence to show whether the sample used was representative of the target population. It follows that the findings of this study cannot be applied to the members of the population without reservations.
Another problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that demand for electricity may decline slightly because of inclination of people to conserve energy or because of efficient appliances. However, there is no evidence to prove that decrease in demand for electricity actually happened because of home owners conservation or efficient appliances. Because, the writer of the argument didn’t shed light on usage of efficient appliances. Maybe the manufacturer can make them but have problems on selling them. On the other hand, the people’s inclination for conserving energy is not enough for decrease demands. Maybe people just have eager to conserve energy and never actually conserve it.
A third problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that things remain the same over the years. However, in most cases this is not true. Maybe the need of twenty years ago doesn’t fulfill the need of next year. Maybe the population of the city growth rapidly till those generating plants doesn’t fulfill the people’s needs.
In the final analysis, the writer's conclusion cannot be taken to be correct because, as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, it depends on a number of assumptions each of which is questionable. The conclusion can only be accepted if the weaknesses already referred to all removed.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 465 350
No. of Characters: 2242 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.644 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.822 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.648 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.474 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 17.2 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.553 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 312, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'owners'' or 'owner's'?
Suggestion: owners'; owner's
...icity actually happened because of home owners conservation or efficient appliances. B...
^^^^^^
Line 17, column 28, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'writers'' or 'writer's'?
Suggestion: writers'; writer's
... needs. In the final analysis, the writers conclusion cannot be taken to be correc...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, hence, however, if, may, so, still, third, you know, in most cases, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2344.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 461.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.08459869848 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63367139033 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81292632751 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.43600867679 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 740.7 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 101.533805077 57.8364921388 176% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.368421053 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2631578947 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.94736842105 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0891127609279 0.218282227539 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0281153351592 0.0743258471296 38% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.038532445005 0.0701772020484 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0466636981696 0.128457276422 36% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0418383579102 0.0628817314937 67% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 27.5 12.3882235529 222% => Linsear_write_formula is high.
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.