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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
While it may be true that customers either do not distinguish butter from margarine or use the term "butter" to refer to either butter or margarine, the business manager's argument lacks compelling evidence. The explaination may sound plausible, but it is plagued with assumptions and speculations, and therefore, not strong enough to convince me. Moreover, I can offer some alternative explanations that can account for the manager's observation.
First, the data that shows only about 2 percent of customers have complained does not necessarily mean that the customers are satisfied. For example, some people may be annoyed by the restaruant's service, but not to the extent that they would file a complaint or confront the managers. It could also be possible that some people are unsatisfied but they do not know how to file a complaint, or that the channels which complaints usually go through, such as hotlines, emails, and websites, are blocked. If this is the case, the actual pecentage of customers who want to complain would be significantly higher than 2 percent.
In addition, the fact that a number of customers do not complain when they get the wrong item does not speak for the entirety of customers. It could be possible that the servers would only report incidents where the customers choose not to complain because it is unusual. Suppose that most customers natually complain when given the wrong item, the ones who do not may appear to be weird and funny, and the servers would remember these uncommon customers and report such incidents when asked by the manager.
Finally, it could be possible that the employees of the resturants did not report what really happened. If the percentage of complaints becomes too high, servers and chefs may be fired or demoted, so when the number of complains increased due to the change, employees chose to withhold the real numbers from the business manager. If this is the case, it explains why the complaint rate is only two percent and why many servers reported a number of customers did not complain.
In sum, there are many explainations that challenges the manager's argument yet still account for his observation. More information is needed to determine the actual situation.
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: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 370 350
No. of Characters: 1824 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.386 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.93 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.7 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 130 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 105 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.799 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.867 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.606 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.059 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 173, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...ither butter or margarine, the business managers argument lacks compelling evidence. The...
^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 435, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...e explanations that can account for the managers observation. First, the data that sh...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 58, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
... many explainations that challenges the managers argument yet still account for his obse...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, may, moreover, really, so, still, therefore, while, for example, in addition, such as
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 : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 28.0 55.5748502994 50% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1886.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 370.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0972972973 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38581623665 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8658845712 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.505405405405 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 569.7 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.8406349166 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.733333333 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.6666666667 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.73333333333 5.70786347227 135% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
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: 0.0421698261041 0.218282227539 19% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0149267764762 0.0743258471296 20% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0254034688133 0.0701772020484 36% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0280266952323 0.128457276422 22% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0285466314565 0.0628817314937 45% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.6 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.