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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 of Happy Pancake House restaurants claims that it is okay to replace butter to margarine and presents several reasons that seems to uphold the claim. However, the memorandum is rife with holes and assumptions and such flaws should be eliminated in order for the business manager to fully maintain his/her claim. Such mistakes will be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the business manager reasons that there have been only 2 percent of complaints after the alteration had been made throughout the restaurants placed in southwestern United States. However, having few complaints does not always indicate that the customers who did not complain are satisfied with the change. Maybe they simply decided not to come to the restaurant anymore without mentioning about how unsatisfied they were with the change, which does not make it okay to replace the butter to margarine. The business manager should also needs to clarify how long it has been since the alteration had been made. If only one or two days had passed after the replacement, there might not have been customers that came and went, and is not representative enough for other customers. Maybe as time goes by, more and more customers would notice the change and complain about it.
In addition, the author of the memorandum assumes that the customers does not distinguish the difference between butter and margarine because there were no complaints when the customers were given margarine instead of butter for their requests. However, it is a similar flaw as mentioned above. Maybe the customers did acknowledge the difference but simply had decided not to come to the restaurant anymore without complaining about it. It could also have been due to alterations being made only on certain menus. If this is the case, only a few customers who did not like to make complaints could have ordered those menus, which means they did distinguish the difference but just did not complain. Furthermore, maybe the customers who did not complain actually preferred margarine over butter and can actually distinguish the difference between butter and margarine.
To sum up, even though the business manager's claim and the evidences that bolster his/her claim might seem plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the memorandum from various views, it is confirmed that his/her claim is unwarranted. For the business manager to effectively warrant his/her claim, he/she would have to eliminate the flaws of making implications, providing unclear information, and making haste assumptions.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 417 350
No. of Characters: 2131 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.519 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.11 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.676 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.529 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.739 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.34 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 549, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'should' requires the base form of the verb: 'need'
Suggestion: need
...arine. The business manager should also needs to clarify how long it has been since t...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, in addition, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2176.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 412.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.28155339806 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50530610838 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73001612249 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 198.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.480582524272 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 674.1 705.55239521 96% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.0664033777 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.0 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2352941176 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.82352941176 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.226753760453 0.218282227539 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0718325061126 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0848675870463 0.0701772020484 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.133737273236 0.128457276422 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.06366175236 0.0628817314937 101% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.78 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.