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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 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 questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
While the manager’s intention of increasing profitability by avoiding the expense of purchasing butter for his pancake house restaurants may be a good idea but the explanations and reasons that it bases its conclusion on is insufficiently supported. To back his hypothesis, the manager needs to provide additional information to properly evaluate the claim.
In the memorandum, the manager reports that only 2 percent of customers complained for butter being replaced by margarine in most of Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. However, without having a proper figure tying this 2 percent of customers to the total number, we cannot, henceforth, evaluate the manager’s statement. The 2 percent of a million customers stands significantly great in number with almost 20 thousand customers complaining over the replacement, and taking their complaints into consideration will have an influence on their overall business efficiency. Conversely, the same figure tied to merely 100 customers would be a smaller number to take their complaint into consideration and rather ignore. Thus, without informed about the proper figure on the number of complaints reported, the argument cannot be evaluated thoroughly.
Furthermore, the report also claims that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine. The servers that reported this assertion does not provide much information on the what general number of people never complained when given margarine in place of butter. If the number is significantly less compared to total number of customers complained, this statement also fails in providing support to the argument. On the other hand, how many servers reported this information and in what specific locations were the customers okay with replacement? These are the questions that require answers to support the manager’s argument.
Additionally, the manager also hypothesizes by saying that people didn’t know to distinguish butter from margarine. However, there is no information provided on the difference between the chemical structure or the chemical compounds of both butter and margarine. Did people actually couldn’t distinguish or did they accept margarine as a substitute for other qualities it provided apart being a component used for making pancakes? Did the margarine serve to benefit people with their health? Or because of the expense instituted on products with butter, they accepted margarine as a substitute, that comes at lower expense? There is no or survey conducted to enquire about this. Therefore, without the necessary supporting evidences, the argument cannot be evaluated thoroughly.
The manager’s argument, although, intends to exercise profitable business by substituting butter, thereby reducing the expenses, lacks support to proceed with the stated data and requires much more evidences to incorporate the new business strategy. However, with the necessary additional evidences, the manager can decide whether or not to implement this strategy.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2544 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.506 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.948 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 216 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 169 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 128 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 92 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.988 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.53 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 419, Rule ID: ADJECTIVE_IN_ATTRIBUTE[1]
Message: A more concise phrase may lose no meaning and sound more powerful.
Suggestion: great
... million customers stands significantly great in number with almost 20 thousand customers compl...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 634, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
..., that comes at lower expense? There is no or survey conducted to enquire about th...
^^
Line 9, column 324, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...ional evidences, the manager can decide whether or not to implement this strategy.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, conversely, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, so, therefore, thus, while, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2622.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.7 5.12650576532 111% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.07270439309 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.519565217391 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 819.9 705.55239521 116% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.237068956 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.857142857 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.9047619048 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.52380952381 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.270676629671 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0770484356807 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.120884789648 0.0701772020484 172% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136672886529 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0790165488574 0.0628817314937 126% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 33.24 48.3550499002 69% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.78 12.5979740519 125% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.9 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.