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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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, Happy Pancake House has recently replaced butter with margarine and examined the reaction of their customers. The customer complaint data and reports from servers confirmed that the customers are satisfied and even happy with the change. However, the two pieces of evidence do not present a full picture of what the customers think, and the manager is simply assuming the reactions of the customers based on the partial data.
The fact that only 2 percent of customers have complained does not indicate that the others are happy about the change. They probably have their opinions but just have not expressed them; they may have not participated in the survey, assuming that there was one. In order to interpret the data properly, more information regarding the types of questions, whether the data was collected as an open question or measured on a scale, and the number of participants must be provided.
In order to collect sincere responses from the customers, the servers should have explained the new change and asked if they were still satisfied with the margarine. However, the servers simply gave them margarine when asked for butter. As the two ingredients are very similar in taste and texture, the customers may have not recognized the difference. Using such circumstances to argue that replacing butter with margarine is okay because customers cannot tell the difference is quite deceptive.
In conclusion, the argument that the new change had no impact on the customers cannot be proven correct as there is no sufficient evidence that backs up this argument. The evidence provided in the passage is all assumptions rather than hard, factual evidence. In order to present an accurate picture of the reaction, a proper customer survey must be designed and implemented.
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: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 294 350
No. of Characters: 1486 1500
No. of Different Words: 155 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.141 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.054 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.617 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 111 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.615 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.811 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.538 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.359 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, regarding, still, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1521.0 2260.96107784 67% => OK
No of words: 294.0 441.139720559 67% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.17346938776 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.14082457966 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70845921279 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 163.0 204.123752495 80% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.554421768707 0.468620217663 118% => OK
syllable_count: 484.2 705.55239521 69% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 37.5335747134 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.0 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6153846154 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.15384615385 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.141921754786 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0550143444378 0.0743258471296 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0857164989594 0.0701772020484 122% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.084111958793 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0645948962819 0.0628817314937 103% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.08 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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.