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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 author states that the consequence of replacing butter by margarine is negligible since the customers barely complain about the change. However, the author fails to consider several alternative views which will undermine his explanations.
The memo says that only 2 percent of customers have expressed that they are angry with change, meaning that about 98 percent of them are happy with it. However, there is a possibility that people only complain when they are angry enough. Therefore, there could be a huge amount of customers who slightly disapprove the replacement but didn't express the feeling. As a result, even though the restaurant only receives a few complaints, the number of customers could drop dramatically. The author should conduct a comprehensive survey to make sure whether the other people agree with the change.
The author also mentions that restaurant receives some reports from servers showing that people don't complain when they are given margarine while asking for butter because they can't recognize the two or just use butter as a general term. Yet, it is possible that there are indeed many complaints received by the servers but some reasons make them unwilling to report. For example, the server may have to write a thorough report to explain the whole scenario why the customers were angry and get a lot of questions that asked by those managers. Since those servers are already exhausted after a day of work, there is no motivation for them to report the complaints of customers to get themself into troubles.
Even if the servers do report every case they encountered to their boss, the author still fails to take another possible situation into account, which is that the number of customers who are not happy with the change are also quite high. Since there are people okay with the replacement doesn't mean there can't be people disagree with it, the restaurant could end up losing a large portion of its customers. Also, it is harder to attract customers than to lose them. Only focus on the those people who don't have any comments on the replacement can probably be misleading.
There are a few alternative explanations which are not considered by the author.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1804 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.863 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.56 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 128 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.188 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.036 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.562 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.574 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 336, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: didn't
...slightly disapprove the replacement but didnt express the feeling. As a result, even ...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 97, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...eports from servers showing that people dont complain when they are given margarine ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 178, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...ne while asking for butter because they cant recognize the two or just use butter as...
^^^^
Line 7, column 288, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...re are people okay with the replacement doesnt mean there cant be people disagree with...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 306, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
... with the replacement doesnt mean there cant be people disagree with it, the restaur...
^^^^
Line 7, column 502, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...hem. Only focus on the those people who dont have any comments on the replacement ca...
^^^^
Line 7, column 572, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...replacement can probably be misleading. There are a few alternative explanations...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, so, still, therefore, while, for example, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1845.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 367.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0272479564 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37689890912 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.59946646557 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.514986376022 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 581.4 705.55239521 82% => 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: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.4425171285 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.3125 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9375 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.125 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
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: 0.0828154298068 0.218282227539 38% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0270115094666 0.0743258471296 36% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0336398549885 0.0701772020484 48% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.045403713219 0.128457276422 35% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0246500980742 0.0628817314937 39% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.19 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
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.