The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that 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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author of the memorandum recommends that to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, Happy Pancake House restaurants located in southeast and northeast should replace their uses of butter with those of margarine. To support the recommendation, the author cites complaints and reports from servers from the southeastern restaurants where butter has already been replaced by margarine. However, this recommendation would not be persuasive if the author provides no additional evidence to answer some questions on the assumptions the argument depends on.
First of all, the author appeals to the fact that only about 2 percent of customers have complained about the change from butter to margarine. From this fact, the author reasons that the rest of the customers who did not complained would be happy with the change. Yet, this line of reasoning assumes that all complaints comes only from those who have complaints. However, there is no substantiating evidence for it. Without such evidence, it is entirely possible that almost all the other people who really have complaints about the change did not show it, instead they went out the restaurants and never came back again. Then if the northeast restaurants follow this recommendation, their profitability would be harmed by loss of existing customers.
Also, the author appeals to the fact that, according to the reports from the servers, most of those who ordered butter do not complain when they were served with margarine. From the fact above, the author concludes that either these customers could not distinguish butter from margarine or use ‘butter’ more widely including margarine. Yet, the author fails to consider other possible scenarios. First, it could be that they could have distinguish butter from margarine, but they did not complain it because they have no time to do it. Then their chances of returning the restaurants would be dramatically lowered. Or, it is equally possible that even though they could not distinguish butter from margarine, they ordered butter since butter is healthier than margarine so that if the restaurants provide no more butter, then they would not go there. Therefore, it these alternative possible situations, the recommendation would deteriorate the restaurants’ profitability from the loss of existing and even prospect customers.
Finally, even though we grant that the change introduced in southwestern restaurants was successful, it would not be justified to argue that that policy would give benefit for northeast restaurants. This reasoning assumes that the two areas are alike enough. However, the author does not justify this assumption. It is entirely possible that the northeastern area is one of the largest milk producing area in the world so that the butter price of this area is far cheaper than that of southwestern area. Then the change would save far less cost, or the profit would be decreased because of additional cost for change. Another possible scenario is that whereas southwestern people are less concerned about healthier food than those of northeastern so that implementation of the change would beget failure of Happy Pancake House at northeast.
In sum, the recommendation fails to persuade me as it stands. To strengthen the validity of the recommendation, the author need to implement a new customer research at southwestern area. To assess efficacy of the policy, I also need to know whether the two areas are similar enough.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 555 350
No. of Characters: 2875 1500
No. of Different Words: 226 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.854 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.18 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.863 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 154 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.317 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.64 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.461 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 310, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'complaints'' or 'complaint's'?
Suggestion: complaints'; complaint's
...this line of reasoning assumes that all complaints comes only from those who have complain...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 447, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'distinguished'.
Suggestion: distinguished
...First, it could be that they could have distinguish butter from margarine, but they did not...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, really, so, then, therefore, whereas, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 25.0 13.6137724551 184% => OK
Pronoun: 57.0 28.8173652695 198% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2961.0 2260.96107784 131% => OK
No of words: 555.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 5.33513513514 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85370353223 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01608167007 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.437837837838 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 901.8 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.6384992987 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.44 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.6 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.193135728513 0.218282227539 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0544470931001 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0569861939937 0.0701772020484 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.10624416385 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.047882285735 0.0628817314937 76% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => 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: 13.69 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.14 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 120.0 98.500998004 122% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.