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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 filed a formal complaint, 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 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, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The manager claims that Happy Pancake House should replace butter with margarine in its restaurants in northeast and southeast as a cost-saving measure to avoid the expense of butter and to increase the profitability. He presents evidence to support his claim but upon careful inspection, they provide little credible support. Therefore, the argument can be considered unsubstantiated and flawed.
First of all, the argument assumes that the customers are happy with the replacement of butter by margarine, but fails to provide proper evidence to support this position. For instance, the customers might not have felt the need to complain and those complaints might have gone unheard. Further, it can be implied that a lot of customers ask for butter but do not complain when they are given margarine instead. So, it could be the case that the customers are not satisfied and might stop coming to the Happy Pancake House restaurants in the future. This could cause defamation to the brand name as a whole and this is in contrary to the manager's intention. Therefore, the argument would be more convincing if it could prove that whether acting on this assumption would not produce adverse results.
Additionally, the manager's claim that customers are not able to distinguish between butter and margarine in the southwestern United States and therefore, this will be the pattern for customers' acceptance in the rest of the localities. In its current form, the manager's assumption has several possibilities to fail that includes several scenarios in which customers are able to distinguish between butter and margarine. Hence, the argument would have been more convincing if it shed more light upon the customer's actual acceptance of margarine as a replacement for butter.
However, the manager might not necessarily be wrong to state that only two percent of the customers have complained about the replacement of butter with margarine, if he could provide more evidence such as a feedback from the customers about their satisfaction, it would help to better understand the problem in hand.
In conclusion, the argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To support the manager's claim, he must provide strong evidence, perhaps a feedback form for customer satisfaction to improve the profitability of Happy Pancake House.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not exactly. better way: while it works for A, it may not work for B.
argument 3 -- not OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 370 350
No. of Characters: 1913 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.386 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.17 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.864 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.358 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.733 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.582 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.112 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 639, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
... a whole and this is in contrary to the managers intention. Therefore, the argument woul...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 261, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...he localities. In its current form, the managers assumption has several possibilities to...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, however, if, so, therefore, for instance, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1957.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 370.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.28918918919 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38581623665 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93378222764 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 172.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.464864864865 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 612.0 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
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: 64.3671413758 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.466666667 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.6666666667 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.46666666667 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.243166999955 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0815072684345 0.0743258471296 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0740164542992 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142412287199 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0142970272994 0.0628817314937 23% => 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: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.03 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.