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“Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 speaker is stating about the results of the replacement to margarine from butter in Happy Pancake House restaurants in southwestern United States. The argument stresses that this change didn’t impact their customers very much. To support this statement, the speaker cites the proportion of customers who raised complaints which is indicated as 2 percent. Although this argument may seem convincing at first, the assumptions lead readers to doubt the validity of the argument.
First, the validity of the evidences is open to doubt. There are two proofs provided in the argument: the percentage of customers complained, and the testimonies from the servers. However, the details of the surveys such as the characteristics of the respondents and the point of time are not illustrated. For example, for a better judgment, the characteristics such as their experiences at the restaurant beforehand need to be stated. In addition, the temporal point is important because if the customers already got used to food with margarine, there is a probability that they see less difference.
Second, the speaker assumes that the visitors who haven’t complained are happy about the alteration. We can see that the speaker is committing a fallacy of oversimplication. There can be several reasons about people not complaining; they might not have enough courage to show their dissatisfaction or they might find it as a trivial problem. Anyhow, we can’t hastily conclude that these 98 percent of customers are happy about taking margarine.
Finally, the speaker claims that the customers are incapable of discerning margarine from butter because they didn’t raise any complaints at the time when they are given margarine even though they asked for butter. But butter and margarine are hardly distinguishable by vision. At the point that they saw the slippery yellow product came to their table, there is a possibility that the customers thought it was the butter they commanded. Their reaction after tasting the margarine should be described to analyze their contentment.
In conclusion, this argument of the business manager is not well supported. The argument could be more persuasive if the speaker mentions the detailed explanations of the evidences and the reason why customers didn’t make any complaints.
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: 19 15
No. of Words: 367 350
No. of Characters: 1894 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.377 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.161 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.933 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 114 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.316 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.959 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.526 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, so, well, for example, in addition, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1958.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 363.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.39393939394 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.3649236973 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03449747276 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.523415977961 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 594.0 705.55239521 84% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 41.5071999228 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.052631579 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1052631579 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.52631578947 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.177235549215 0.218282227539 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0588983563333 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.108032455707 0.0701772020484 154% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0965975070866 0.128457276422 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0921562812435 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.98 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.67 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.