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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
Worldwide people and their tastes vary a lot. That can be seen through the different cuisines if we are talking about the tastes in food. Just as well as in Europe from country to country, there are contrasting dished popular to the culture, but there are some international crowdpleaser foods, I would assume that people in United States have foods particular to every state and liked by only a part of population.
The first question which would be risen, would be if people get the same menus in Happy Pancake Houses in all the states or does it vary. If the menu is the same to everybody, then we could see that probably custumers have the same taste and try same things with butter/margarine which would cross out the through that maybe in the dishes served in one state these ingredients have more share of taste than in the ones from the other states. If the menus are different than maybe, what people get in southwestern states has smaller share of butter and therefore does not matter as much as in other states and therefore the assumption would not work perfectly in this case.
Another question might be general supply of the market in the states. What I mean is if they get the same diary products, or of the same quality. If the quality is lower in southwestern states, than there is a chance that in other states people know well what the real butter is and therefore would easily distinguish it from the margarine. If the products are the same than there is nothing wrong with the recommendation, because from this perspective the so called audience will be on the same level of determining the difference between products.
Considering that people who ask for butter, get margarine, say nothing about this matter we can assume that these people just do not have time, or simply do not want to interfere with servers. That would raise a question in the way people respond to any problems rising around them. Do people in southwestern states tend to be negligent of the minor problems? Are they trying to stay out of the argument? If yes, then maybe people from other states would not and in that case the recommendation once again would not hold.
Yet, there are only 2% of people who complained. Therefore this people eighter cannot see the difference or simply do not care. The reason they do not care can vary from the poor/good quality of both products, to the fact that the difference is so unimportant in taste that they do not make an issue out of it. However, butter is healthier product which people living a healthy lifestyle would consider. So, probably we should ask about the lifestyles of people from different states.
If in all questions asked states are more of less similar, than there probably will be no problem and recommendation would be very helpful and profitable. However if there is a big difference even in one topic than the view of changing the product in other states would probably need a futher evaluation. After all, saying that people are different usually holds true in many subjects, but it is still a question if they do have different tastes in one globalized country.
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: 23 15
No. of Words: 551 350
No. of Characters: 2524 1500
No. of Different Words: 228 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.845 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.581 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.444 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 68 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.957 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.93 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.696 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.323 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.548 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 471, Rule ID: RATHER_THEN[2]
Message: Did you mean 'different 'from''? 'Different than' is often considered colloquial style.
Suggestion: from
...ther states. If the menus are different than maybe, what people get in southwestern ...
^^^^
Line 9, column 51, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...e are only 2% of people who complained. Therefore this people eighter cannot see the diff...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 157, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...n would be very helpful and profitable. However if there is a big difference even in on...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, well, after all, i mean, talking about, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2600.0 2260.96107784 115% => OK
No of words: 549.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 4.73588342441 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84053189512 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56259230861 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 238.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.433515482696 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 810.9 705.55239521 115% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 72.5874220332 57.8364921388 126% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.043478261 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.8695652174 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.69565217391 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.0859093473905 0.218282227539 39% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.027885419197 0.0743258471296 38% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0305864745115 0.0701772020484 44% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0489862142147 0.128457276422 38% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0347836949236 0.0628817314937 55% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.51 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.54 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.