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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 author of the argument claims that two main reasons why the customers of Happy Pancake House do not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter are either that they do not understand the difference between these two products or they use the word butter for both. While these explanations may be credible, there are other possible reasons for the lack of complaints.
One of such reasons is that consumers are not too meticulous in the choice between butter and margarine. They come to Happy Pancake House with the purpose of having good pancakes while butter is considered as a supplementary product. In other words, they do not care whether they eat pancakes with butter or margarine and thus do not consider it is worth complaining about such policy of the company. Indeed, is it reasonable to complain about something that does not change significantly the taste of the main product that customers buy? If the author had provided an evidence that changing butter for margarine leads to substantial change in the taste of pancakes, the author’s argument would have been more convincing.
Secondly, customers may simply find margarine better tasting or healthier than butter. Nowadays, more and more people are refusing from eating animal-derived food because they find it not good for their health or because the production of such food contradicts their visions of humanity. Indeed, it is reasonable to assume that customers support such change in the company’s policy and this is a major reason why they do not complain about it. If the author have claimed that most of people prefer butter instead of margarine, his or her explanations of why only two percent of people complain would have been more plausible.
Finally, when driving his or her conclusion, the author is making an assumption that if people do not complain about the change in the company’s policy then they find it proper. This is a rather strong assumption. Not every person who finds some policy incorrect takes actions to share his or her opinion about it. Indeed, a customer may be in a hurry to make any complaints or simply believe that this does not worth his or her time and energy. Also, the procedures of how to leave a complaint may not be transparent enough. In the end, a person may be just too shy to tell a manager of the restaurant that he or she finds new policy improper.
To sum up, though the author’s explanations of the phenomenon are valid they are not exhaustive and are based on a very strong assumption. Ultimately, the argument might have been strengthened by making it clear that margarine changes the taste of pancakes, that consumers can easily distinguish between butter and margarine and that in most cases people complain when they are not happy with some policy of a company.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 477 350
No. of Characters: 2283 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.673 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.786 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.58 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.105 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.269 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.118 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 482, Rule ID: MOST_SOME_OF_NNS[1]
Message: After 'most of', you should use 'the' ('most of the people') or simply say ''most people''.
Suggestion: most of the people; most people
...out it. If the author have claimed that most of people prefer butter instead of margarine, his...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 632, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...omplain would have been more plausible. Finally, when driving his or her conclus...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, while, in most cases, in other words, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 50.0 28.8173652695 174% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2358.0 2260.96107784 104% => OK
No of words: 477.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 4.94339622642 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67336384929 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74506187958 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.429769392034 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 737.1 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.0204997115 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.105263158 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1052631579 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.78947368421 5.70786347227 101% => 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 : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.150174707073 0.218282227539 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0502891529455 0.0743258471296 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0558982120434 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0954793254507 0.128457276422 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0457094775678 0.0628817314937 73% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.67 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.72 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.