The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake
House restaurants.
Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout
the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have filed a formal
complaint, 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 cannot
distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or
margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should
extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country.
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 this argument, the manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants concludes that the Happy Pancake House should extend the strategy of replacing butter with margarine throughout the rest of the United States. To support this conclusion, the manager argues that only 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint and that a number of servers have reported that several customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. However, neither of these reasons stated in the memorandum provides sufficient support for the conclusion.
The first issue to be addressed is the manager concludes that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change since only 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint. However, this conclusion is flawed because it falsely assumes that those people who do not file the complaint are delighted with this change. In this case, three possible groups of people could be put forth here: people who are happy about the change, people who are neutral about the change, and people who dislike the change but do not file the complaint. To strengthen his/her argument, the manager would benefit from providing more detailed information such as they do receive positive feedback from those customers who don't file formal complaints.
Additionally, the manager implies that their customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine because they do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Admittedly, there are some among these customers who don't understand the difference between either item. Nonetheless, some might just be indifferent between the two alternatives. Moreover, the feedback is reported by the local servers, who could concoct the results just to delight their manager.
The manager also assumes that the condition throughout the rest of the country is similar to the case in the southeastern United States. Even though all of the previous claims are substantiated, extending the plan throughout the country is still a precarious move. The success in the southeastern United States may just be an abnormity, we can not ensure people elsewhere will also appreciate the change. This assumption could be strengthened if the manager conducts an exhaustive survey throughout the country before making the move.
As shown, this argument engages in three major assumptions, but neither of the assumptions is tenable enough to prop the argument up. To consummate the argument, the manager must provide complete feedback collected from customers, even from those who do not live in the southwestern United States.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 428 350
No. of Characters: 2219 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.548 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.185 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.671 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.176 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.438 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.594 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 713, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...itive feedback from those customers who dont file formal complaints. Additionally...
^^^^
Line 5, column 218, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...here are some among these customers who dont understand the difference between eithe...
^^^^
Line 7, column 150, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...southeastern United States. Even though all of the previous claims are ^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, moreover, nonetheless, so, still, then, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => 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: 2300.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 422.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.45023696682 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53239876712 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.15111351874 2.78398813304 113% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.483412322275 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 695.7 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.816112586 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 135.294117647 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8235294118 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.88235294118 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.287713780715 0.218282227539 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0860879226753 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.10900833682 0.0701772020484 155% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.155580484888 0.128457276422 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.138560394797 0.0628817314937 220% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.63 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.38 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.