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Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 argument regarding to the recent change in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States indicates that due to the 98 percent of customers are happy with the use of margarine instead of butter and the number of complain is not considerable, the restaurants can replace butter by margarine in order to reduce the cost. The argument seems to be reasonable, however, some explanations are needed in order to warrantee it.
First, the argument asserts that only 2% of the customers have complained the use of margarine instead of butter which means 98 people out of 100 are happy with it. However, there are other explanations to this situation. For example, how many people exactly complain and how many are not pleased but choose not to inform the restaurants? Complaining about food in a restaurant is considered impolite and irritated, people tend to keep taciturn and may decide never come to the same place again. Therefore, the statistic may seem positive, but we cannot guarantee that people are actually satisfied with this change since numbers of people who file complains is required to support the argument.
Secondly, the argument states that many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead; therefore the change is accepted and people are happy with it. But, there are explanation may weaken the arguments. For example, if there are proper channels for customers to complain about food served in the restaurants? Moreover, have servers in the restaurants conceal customers’ complains because they don’t want to reports any bad news to their supervisors? If these circumstances are valid, it is imaginable that there will not be any complain about their services. Consequently, the statistic regarding to their services is fallacious and the argument’s position is unjustified.
Finally, even though customers in southwestern United States don’t complain about the use of margarine instead of butter, it doesn’t mean that customer from other places are unaware of the issue. The argument believes customers may not be able to distinguish the difference between butter and margarine, so they can policy of the replacement can be applied nationwide. However, this situation requires more explanations. If customers cannot tell the difference of they simply don’t care? If there are new customers who don’t even know the restaurants use butter before and consider margarine the authentic flavor? Also, what if customers do notice the use of margarine when they anticipate the use of butter and decide never come back again? These are some alternative explanations needed to be examined in order to strengthen the argument.
To sum up, in order to enhance its suggestion, the argument should take some alternative explanation into consideration, such as: the validity of statistics, if there are proper channels for customers to file a complaint and if servers hide complains to avoid responsibilities, also, if customers from other areas can accept the policy or not.
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 498 350
No. of Characters: 2532 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.724 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.084 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.847 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 190 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 142 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.353 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.952 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.5 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.084 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 494, Rule ID: TO_NON_BASE[1]
Message: The verb after "to" should be in the base form: 'report'.
Suggestion: report
...mplains because they don't want to reports any bad news to their supervisors? If t...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, consequently, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, for example, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2641.0 2260.96107784 117% => OK
No of words: 493.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.3569979716 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71206996034 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0122680474 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.442190669371 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 848.7 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.1952831949 57.8364921388 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.761904762 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4761904762 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.61904761905 5.70786347227 133% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.151950604382 0.218282227539 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0493885108342 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0699462046299 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104962746347 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0965392816391 0.0628817314937 154% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.