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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
In the memorandum presented by the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurant, the author concludes that the customers either did not acknowledge the discrepancy between butter and margarine or used the same term ‘butter’ to refer to butter and margarine. However, for this claim to be fully justified, the argument requires more clarification and less assumption. This passage is rife with holes and assumptions and will be discussed below.
First of all, the author made a flaw of oversimplification. He/she assumed that 98 people out of 100 customers are okay with the change from butter to margarine since only 2 percent of the customers complained about such change. However, it is opaque to how many customers the restaurant asked whether they realized the change. The restaurant could have only asked 2 customers out of a hundred about the change and claim that the other 98 customers are still satisfied. Furthermore, generally, normal customers would simply stop consuming the products of the Happy Pancake House restaurant if they noticed the change in taste. Only small amount of people would have come back to complain about the change.
In addition, the change from butter to margarine may attract new customers who prefer margarine over butter. The regular customers who were satisfied with the taste of butter would be replaced by new customers which seems like little customers are complaining about the change. Just like mentioned above, this wanting of complaints may result in 2 percent of customers complaining, however, does not fully justify the author’s claim.
Furthermore, the change could be accepted depending on the occasion. If the menu the customers ordered were specifically cooked for margarine to be used, then customers would not complain about the change. Even if they noticed the change in taste, they would believe that it is due to the change of the menu.
To sum up, examining the various factors and angles involved with the authors claim that it is appropriate to replace butter to margarine since little customers complained about such change, the argument does not justify its claim. While the passage highlights a possibility, more information is required to warrant such action.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 360 350
No. of Characters: 1832 1500
No. of Different Words: 168 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.356 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.089 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.692 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.176 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.652 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.383 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.383 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.12 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, still, then, while, in addition, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => 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: 1883.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 359.0 441.139720559 81% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.24512534819 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35284910392 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80874713193 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.481894150418 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 585.9 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.2289979497 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.764705882 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1176470588 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.82352941176 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.194058226001 0.218282227539 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0655931332776 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0737257731617 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112723297608 0.128457276422 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0597655669452 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.17 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.42 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => 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
---------------------
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.