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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 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 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 and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The memorandum from the business manager describes about a change made in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. The change includes using margarine instead of butter to avoid expenses and increase profitability. The manager suggest to apply the same scheme throughout others restaurants as well by supporting with certain examples. The claims of the manager based on the given pieces of evidence seems to be weak and need more detail study before making any suggestion.
Initially, the manager tells that the southwestern United States restaurants have inculcated the change of replacing the butter with margarine. No specific statistics is provided by the manager about the above implementation. Is it the case all restaurants have adopted the change throughout southwestern? Do all the restaurants making change serve as prime contributors to profit of Happy Pancake House? Is the footfall of customers in these restaurants significant enough to affect the profitability? So, only considering a specific case for generalizing the idea of change is unacceptable.
Further, the managers tells that very few customers have complained against the change, this seems their expression for happiness. This is really vague assumption that being quite is being satisfied. There may be many different alternative possibilities that can be taken into an account - Customers were unable to distinguish between butter and margarine. It is also possible that customer have been aware about such deceitful behavior of restaurant and are tolerating or have already refrained visiting restaurant anymore. One possibility is the misplacement of the existing complaints. One can also ask about the customers being regular that are included in survey and whether they prefer butter over margarine? Therefore, before answer such huge number of questions arising the manager is not in position to suggest any further application of change.
Moreover, the manager concludes with statement to apply the same changes throughout all restaurants of Happy Pancake House for increasing profitability. This makes us aware about managers assumption of considering the change responsible for profitability of restaurant. One obiuous questions can be asked is - Is only this change responsible for increasing profit? There can be many other factors such as giving good services, increasing number of branches in favourable areas, introducing multiple exciting schemes on the purchase of items, also upgrading the advertisement methods to bring the restaurant in limelight. Thus, before consideration of all such possible factors the suggestion is not acceptable.
Finally, the only advice that can be given to manager is to revisit the claims and evidences made by him and try to make them more concrete. The application of the change throughout all the restaurant of Happy Pancake House can be acceptable only on basis of some good and appreciable points.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 12 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 451 350
No. of Characters: 2469 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.608 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.475 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.992 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 192 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.792 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.383 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.458 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.297 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 250, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...id expenses and increase profitability. The manager suggest to apply the same schem...
^^^
Line 1, column 262, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'suggest applying'.
Suggestion: suggest applying
...and increase profitability. The manager suggest to apply the same scheme throughout others resta...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 370, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ll by supporting with certain examples. The claims of the manager based on the give...
^^^
Line 3, column 213, Rule ID: NUMEROUS_DIFFERENT[1]
Message: Use simply 'many'.
Suggestion: many
... quite is being satisfied. There may be many different alternative possibilities that can be t...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, if, may, moreover, really, so, therefore, thus, well, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2514.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 451.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.57427937916 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60833598836 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.08624587884 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 224.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.49667405765 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 810.9 705.55239521 115% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => 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: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 40.4665285212 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.75 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.7916666667 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.375 5.70786347227 59% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
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: 0.377138503163 0.218282227539 173% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.111947905543 0.0743258471296 151% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.121697990271 0.0701772020484 173% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.231996190693 0.128457276422 181% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0839208736229 0.0628817314937 133% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.28 48.3550499002 75% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.03 12.5979740519 119% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.