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.
In the memorandum, an electrical power company argues that they do not need to construct a new power plant because the three generating plants have been sufficient during the past twenty years. The planning department of this company assume some assumptions to reach to this conclusion, and if these assumptions prove to be fallacious, the argument will fall apart.
First of all, the planning company claims that during the past twenty years ago the three generating power plants were adequate for their needs, but they should consider the future’s circumstances of this area. If there are some wildernesses that are potential to develop and construct new homes, then it’s plausible that the three generating power plants won’t meet the future’s needs. Therefore, they should conduct a study about the future plans of developments in this region. If this assumption proves to be true, then the decision made by the planning department will be invalid.
Moreover, they assume that based on the several recent surveys, home owners are willing to save energy. There is not any sufficient information about those surveys. They should explain more about the region’s demographics, and the survey’s methodology. How many questions are there in those surveys? What were the specific questions asked about the saving energy? How many home owners contribute to the surveys? It’s possible that in the surveys, they ask only a question about people’s opinion around the consuming energy, so the results would not be conceiving. Furthermore, they assert that manufactures have offered some new energy efficient home appliances like air conditioners. They assume that home owners will buy them to save more energy. However, what are the prices of the new technological home appliances? It’s possible that people won’t buy them due to their prohibitive prices.
Also, they do not have any information about industries. If it’s true that the home owners are eager to save energy, the planning department must know better that the majority of the energy consumes belongs to the industries. If there are several manufactures in this region, they should be willing to consider plans to save energy as well to help the planning department to made a decision about the construction of a new plant. Without conducting a study about the manufactures’ and industries’ plans and eagerness, the planning department’s decision will be unsound.
All in all, the argument, as it stands now, is full of unwarranted assumptions and as a result is flawed. The planning department must consider other factors that may affect their decisions. They may use a systematic study about the manufactures and the home owners to see whether they are willing to buy any novel, conservative energy technological devices or not.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 450 350
No. of Characters: 2289 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.606 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.087 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.714 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 114 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.856 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.3 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.086 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 366, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ve energy technological devices or not.
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, well, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2372.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 448.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.29464285714 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60065326758 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88111801902 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450892857143 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 724.5 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 52.7911898163 57.8364921388 91% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.8333333333 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.6666666667 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.625 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.24232578442 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0777165958392 0.0743258471296 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0629586084153 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.139432824071 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0430470651448 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.4 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.