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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
Happy Pancake House replaced butter by margarine in their restaurants throughout southwest United States recently. The author offers some interesting arguments on this topic and claims that this change had a little impact on their customers for certain reasons. However, his claim did not include enough information and details and is arguments are based on assumptions.
First of all, the author claims that only 2 percent of customers have complained about their margarine on pancakes. He concluded that in this case, 98 percent of the people are happy with the change. It is easy to understand that 2 percent is a really low average but to conclude that everyone who did not complain is automatically happy is an assumption. Of course, there are people who did not complain but who are also not satisfied. When people are eating in a restaurant they want to have a good time and complaining is not a part of that atmosphere. In that 98 percent, there are absolutely people who are satisfied with margarine but it is an assumption to say that every one of the 98 percents is happy.
In addition, the author claims that many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Not complaining about an action does not automatically mean that people are satisfied with the service of giving margarine instead of butter. There are a lot of reasons why people do not complain because they do not want to lower a good atmosphere or they are too shy to complain.
There is also nothing known about the exactly amount of what is called ‘’a number of customers’’. There is a possibility that servers seeing not that many people a day which means that a number of people could be very much related to the total amount of people which are seen by servers. Because there is nothing known about the exact amount of a number of customers there is not a possibility to make a valid argument.
To summarise, that only 2 percent of the people complained about the replacement of butter does not automatically mean that the other people are glad about it. Also the fact that a number of people did not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter and some unknown details about the exact amount of what is called a number of customers. The reasons above prove that the argument lacks information and seems to provide inchoate assumptions. The memorandum had to present more concrete evidence to support the claim and make the argument more cogent.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 119, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...apos;a number of customers''. There is a possibility that servers seeing no...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 309, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Because” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...nt of people which are seen by servers. Because there is nothing known about the exact ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 161, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...hat the other people are glad about it. Also the fact that a number of people did no...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, really, so, in addition, of course, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 1.0 12.9520958084 8% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 28.0 13.6137724551 206% => Less relative clauses wanted (maybe 'which' is over used).
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2114.0 2260.96107784 94% => OK
No of words: 436.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 4.84862385321 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56953094068 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77844608482 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.405963302752 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 674.1 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Interrogative: 1.0 0.471057884232 212% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 30.7636869073 57.8364921388 53% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 111.263157895 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9473684211 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.94736842105 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.149329738813 0.218282227539 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0578275943039 0.0743258471296 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0995625437326 0.0701772020484 142% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0990883101888 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0964487059099 0.0628817314937 153% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.15 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.37 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 73.0 98.500998004 74% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => 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 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.