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 a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company, it was stated it will be unwise for the company to construct new generating plants because of the projected decrease in energy demands from home owners in the community. The planning department however fails to provide adequate evidence to validate their conclusion, a lot of their considerations were made on unsubstantiated assumptions. In this essay, I will list three questions that need to be answered before the planning department’s argument can be properly evaluated.
Firstly, is it not possible that the amount of home owners that are willing to adopt the new technologies for energy efficiency are insignificant? In the argument stated above, there was no consideration into the number of home owners within the community that are willing to buy new and more energy efficient appliances, it is possible that the number of home owners that will be migrate to the more energy efficient appliances might be insignificant when they are compared to the ones who would not. Hence, if this is the case, the argument of the planning department will become significantly compromised.
In addition, the planning department does not mention the capability of the present electric generating plants to meet with the possible change in energy demands. Is it not possible that the new trend of energy demands would require modern energy supply requirements? Is it not also possible that a twenty year old electric generating plant might not be able to meet these modern energy supply requirements? There needs to be more evaluation into the effectiveness of the existing electric generating plants to provide electricity to cater for the present energy demands. If the electric generating plants cannot meet with the requirements needed for the new technologies, then the planning department’s argument becomes significantly flawed.
Furthermore, the planning department’s does not provide any evidence to state that the electric generating plants that have been in existence for more than twenty years will be able to function further for a long period of time. Is it not possible that these electric generating plants will soon stop functioning because of age? Will some rehabilitation not be needed in these plants to ensure that they can function for more years? How long more can they work for? Will they stop working five years down the road or is it two years? These are pertinent questions that the planning department does not answer in the above stated argument. As a result, their argument is poorly evaluated, if there is any deviation from their assumptions when this is investigated, then their argument requires significant modifications.
In conclusion, the argument as it stands requires a lot of modifications. The planning department needs to undergo a scientific process in their evaluation of the benefits and demerits of building new electric generating plants before the situation can be properly evaluated.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 478 350
No. of Characters: 2486 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.676 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.201 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.951 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 189 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 115 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.9 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.644 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.45 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.548 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 214, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... be able to function further for a long period of time. Is it not possible that these electric...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 277, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he situation can be properly evaluated.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, however, if, so, then, in addition, in conclusion, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2545.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 478.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.32426778243 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67581127817 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06544184452 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.397489539749 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 801.9 705.55239521 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 70.520830256 57.8364921388 122% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.25 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.9 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.2 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.170717089703 0.218282227539 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0619960615707 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0610773845867 0.0701772020484 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114037214758 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0584848324196 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.87 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.