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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 business manager claim that there is only little impact of the replacement of butter. However, following some alternative explanations of the data should be considered as well.
First of all, the manager claims that only 2% of customers have complained about the replacement, but the question is does the number shows the reality? What if customers that are unsatisfied with the change tend not to complain but never visit the restaurant again? The percentage of complaints can not infer the true number of unhappy customers.
Secondly, although the servers have reported that customers do not complain when they are given margarine, it doesn't mean customers accept the change. It might be the server who lied and did not tell the customer that they change the butter to margarine. Or even the customer complained but the servers did not tell the business manager the truth, to avoid getting themselves into trouble.
Another question that was confusing is how does the data of 2% come from. Is it from a survey? We have no information about where the data were from. If the collection of data were from a survey but only 1% of the customer has answered the questionnaire, the percentage of the complaint is not likely to be accurate.
Even if replacing butter with margarine does not cause complaints from the customer, it seems like the manager tend to lie to all the customer. What if one day someone realizes that they give margarine but not butter and post it on the internet? It will damage the credibility of the restaurant and cause serious problems.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 267 350
No. of Characters: 1267 1500
No. of Different Words: 132 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.042 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.745 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.613 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 84 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 65 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 51 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.625 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.616 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 135, Rule ID: DOES_NP_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'show'?
Suggestion: show
...nt, but the question is does the number shows the reality? What if customers that are...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 111, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...plain when they are given margarine, it doesnt mean customers accept the change. It mi...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, second, secondly, so, well, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 30.0 55.5748502994 54% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1309.0 2260.96107784 58% => More number of characters wanted.
No of words: 266.0 441.139720559 60% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.92105263158 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.03850299372 4.56307096286 89% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68513968459 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 137.0 204.123752495 67% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.515037593985 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 405.0 705.55239521 57% => syllable counts are too short.
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: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 39.2062353318 57.8364921388 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 87.2666666667 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.7333333333 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.145901010222 0.218282227539 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0564957572692 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.055817538641 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0887283217729 0.128457276422 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.049560849067 0.0628817314937 79% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.6 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 62.68 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.96 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.45 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 50.0 98.500998004 51% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => 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.