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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 of Happy Pancake House restaurants comments on their recent change of butter with margarine, concluding that the change brings about negligible impact on their customers’ satisfaction. Unlikely to make a cogent case, however, the manager fails to establish a strong connection between the evidence with his or her statement.
While it may be true that only 2 percent of the customers have complained about the change, this number does not translate to a 98 percent of satisfaction rate. For one thing, many of them might have opted to express their dissatisfaction another way, such as tipping less than usual. For another thing, they could have altered to dine at other restaurants where they have access to butter, in which case Happy Pancake staff would receive no feedback at all. Either way, the rate of compliant does not accurately reflect the customer’s attitude towards this change since their voice could remain unheard.
Citing the report from the servers, the author assumes their feedback will lead to the conclusion that the customers generally have no complaint about the change. Nevertheless, we have to be careful in generalizing based on this ambiguous piece of information: it remains unclear how many percent these servers account for of all the servers the restaurants are currently hiring across the southern region, and whether these servers work at the same places. For example, the company could have a total of 2,000 servers with 2000 of them working in downtown Houston. If all of them reported no customer complaints on the change, it would still be inadequate to reach the conclusion as 10% of their servers is a small fraction. Furthermore, downtown Houston could by no means represent the entire southern United States since people’s taste could vary with their upbringing and local food to which they are accustomed. Therefore, it would be difficult to estimate their preference based on data from one or a few locations in the south.
To validate the author’s argument, further investigation is needed. For instance, the company could require each branch in the south to hand out questionnaires asking customers’ to comment on this change and their preference. In cases where the participation rate stayed low, they could take measures to spur it such as giving out free gifts as a reward for their cooperation. This way, the survey would be inclusive enough to cover different locations and a fair large percent of the consumer body, therefore minimizing bias resulted from overly narrow sampling and geographic discrepancy.
Surely experimenting with new products could open up the window to more opportunities and potentially save costs, thus creating more profit for the company. Since the current conclusion is untenable due to the ambiguity of the evidence and fallacies in the manager’s deduction, further scrutiny is needed to evaluate the impact of the replacement.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1041, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...om one or a few locations in the south. To validate the author's argument, ...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, furthermore, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, still, therefore, thus, while, another thing, for example, for instance, in general, such as, for another thing, for one thing
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2496.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 472.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.28813559322 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6610686524 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94402117265 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 262.0 204.123752495 128% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.555084745763 0.468620217663 118% => OK
syllable_count: 763.2 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.2231699251 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.666666667 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.2222222222 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 10.0 5.70786347227 175% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.132431630367 0.218282227539 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0416285883701 0.0743258471296 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0500142294058 0.0701772020484 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0831403775197 0.128457276422 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.061982346166 0.0628817314937 99% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.14 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 126.0 98.500998004 128% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.