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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
According to the memorandum from the manager of the Happy Pancake House restaurants, they have swapped butter with margarine in their food meals without any significant impact. It accounts that the lack of distinguishing power of the customers or their disinterested choice between butter and margarine may be responsible for the successful substitution. Although at first glance, the argument seems plausible, it can be seriously undermined with three alternative explanations that the author failed to demonstrate and thus made the recommendation unwarranted.
First of all, it is not mentioned whether 98 percent people clearly state that they are happy with the change. It may be possible that only 20 people out of 1000 customers recently complained about the issue and total number of complaints is also equal to twenty. Other customers may be shocked with the abrupt change and decided to not to come to this restaurant in the future without charging a complain. If any of the above circumstances becomes true, the claim of the manager will not hold water anymore.
Secondly, it is assumed that the change has little impact to their customers. The impacts should be measured from different perspectives. For example, it may be possible that after changing the ingredient, there was a sharp decline in the total number of customers in Pancake restaurants. It may be possible that people who prefer margarine over butter or don't bother about it are the only customers now. Besides, there is no mention regarding the price too. If the Pancake House restaurants offer a low price for their changing meals to hold the potential customers, it may result in a temporary boost. Perhaps after adjusting to the regular price, people will no longer be satisfied with the change. If any of these mentioned concerns is true, the assertion of the writer gets weakened and can't be accepted.
Last but not the least, output from the servers can indicate a forged outcome. It may be possible that customers instantly complain to the busboys, waiters, and local managers instead of complaining in the web server or app. Perhaps, the managers ignore the complains to gain a high profit from the top management. Without providing sufficient details about the number of complains or the procedures to complain, the author keeps us in ambiguity and we can't agree with him without clearing our confusions.
To summarize, Happy Pancake House restaurants certainly make a fair attempt to get responses concerning the replacement of the constituent of the Pancake. However, the one sided response from the manager can't account the real findings after the change. If he provides suitable justifications to the alternative explanations as mentioned in this writing, we may vie with his claim. Since he does not give adequate information about these three mentioned points, we can not support his viewpoint.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 469 350
No. of Characters: 2376 1500
No. of Different Words: 238 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.654 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.066 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.804 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 138 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.391 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.013 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.696 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.281 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.482 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 396, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...staurant in the future without charging a complain. If any of the above circumstances beco...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 357, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...ple who prefer margarine over butter or dont bother about it are the only customers ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 793, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...sertion of the writer gets weakened and cant be accepted. Last but not the least,...
^^^^
Line 7, column 454, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...the author keeps us in ambiguity and we cant agree with him without clearing our con...
^^^^
Line 9, column 205, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...the one sided response from the manager cant account the real findings after the cha...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, first, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, thus, for example, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2430.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 468.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.19230769231 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65116196802 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88464070897 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 242.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.517094017094 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 743.4 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.440439062 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.652173913 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.347826087 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.73913043478 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.212002519535 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0622073901542 0.0743258471296 84% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0751791195837 0.0701772020484 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.119921759115 0.128457276422 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0466631473832 0.0628817314937 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.82 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.81 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 124.0 98.500998004 126% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.5 12.3882235529 125% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.