The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The Business manager comes to a conclusion that customers are unable to differentiate butter from margarine or that they use the same term “butter” for both based on the evidence that only 2 percent of the customers complained about the change from butter to margarine and that most of the customers do not complain when given margarine in place of butter when they ask for butter. This evidences can have multiple interpretations and the following three alternate construes have to be refuted before the bank manager's conclusion can hold water.
Firstly, percentages can be misleading. 2 percent of customers complain can’t be averaged to 98 people of 100. What if the shop is not even that popular and only 10 people visit the shop on average. Moreover, as mentioned that the change is recent there is a possibility that not a lot of people have visited the shop after the change and the data includes the customers before the change too. If these explanations are not proved as false then the conclusion is severely flawed.
Secondly, the assumption that if the customers don’t complain if given margarine, when asked for butter, is treacherous. There is a possibility that the customers assume that the people in the shop do not know the difference between butter and margarine and just do with whatever they are served or that butter and margarine taste the same and look the same so the customers do not complain. If these explanations are not refuted then the pieces of evidence stated do not guarantee the soundness of the conclusion.
Finally, the assumption that change of butter from margarine in the South Western United States have not affected the people much, there is a possibility that after this news broke out all the people who preferred margarine over butter started to visit the pancake house more than the once who preferred butter hence explaining the lower complain rates. Moreover, there is a possibility that after the people got to know the news the people who preferred butter stopped going to the place, and only the once that preferred margarine where left. If this explanation is not proved as false with further evidence, the conclusion cannot be considered as something that we can trust.
The alternate explanations mentioned above can seriously question the voraciousness of the memorandum's conclusions and if not proved as untrue can mean that one of these explanations can be as valid as the explanation provided by the manager. These explanations hence, need to be unwarranted by more facts before the manager’s conclusion can be considered obtain.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 432 350
No. of Characters: 2127 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.559 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.924 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.756 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 104 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 16.924 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.8 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.36 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.424 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.123 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 2 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 440, Rule ID: AS_ADJ_AS[1]
Message: Comparison is written "as false 'as'".
Suggestion: as
...se explanations are not proved as false then the conclusion is severely flawed. Sec...
^^^^
Line 3, column 392, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
... same so the customers do not complain. If these explanations are not refuted then...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, firstly, hence, if, look, moreover, second, secondly, so, then
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2174.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 431.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04408352668 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55637350225 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81932818021 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.412993039443 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 692.1 705.55239521 98% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 98.4730081461 57.8364921388 170% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.933333333 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.7333333333 23.324526521 123% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.53333333333 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.150315351752 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0448160274076 0.0743258471296 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0544822941814 0.0701772020484 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0838921390293 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0546927226202 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.54 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.77 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.