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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
In this memo, the manager argues that butter replacement with margarine could lead to little impact on their customers. To support his/her claim, the author quotes both the little customer complaints and the servers' feedback about customers' attitude to such change. Quite convincing though such explanation appears, we can not safely argue that it is the unique explanation that could account for the facts presented by the author. Therefore, we need to plumb other explanations, which could rival with the one proposed in the passage.
To start off, the author ascribes the satisfaction out of majority of customers to the fact that only 2 percentage of customers complaint. While it is possible that rare complains signifies a positive customer feedback, others factors could result in such phenomenon as well. First of all, it is likely that the survey used for complaint collecting is designed to fit for just a group of people who are inclined to have little complaints. Furthermore, as the feedback result would be linked with designer's annual performance, they actually choose a pre-analyzed respondents during the procedure of survey. If either of aforementioned cases stay true, it is reasonable to assume that such 2 percentage complaints isn't a impartial reflection for the real customer status, thus it could weaken the author's explanation.
Moreover, the author presents two explanations for the facts that servers reported to customers' attitude for such changes. However, customers' attitude could spring not only from those two reasons, but also other probabilities. For example, customers might easily distinguish butter from provided margarine, however, when taking margarine for a trial, they actually find margarine have better taste than they expected. If it is the case, the surprise brought back by good tastes definitely lead to no negative feedback. Furthermore, while some customer asked servers for butter instead of margarine, they are so busy and little time for their dinner that they would like to accept such alternative instead of spending time on complaints, which merely increase their time cost. Without further investigation, we don't which explanation could lead to such situation mentioned above. And it's even likely that all of them conspire to customers' positive attitude to such replacement.
Last but not least, while little complaints and conspicuous customer attitudes might lend support to the conclusion of trivial business impact, it is reckless for us to claim that it is the unique reason for such conclusion. Other factors might contribute to such outgrowth as well. Taking margarine's storage as example, after using margarine to replace with butter, the company might save quite a lot of money for storage of their raw material, as the result of less rigorous reserved condition for margarine. Consequently, such cost decline brings about diminishing of service fee and restaurants prices, which are afforded largely by customers. Thus, with the same money as before, customers could enjoy much better services for food and housing, which contributes to little impact on company business.
In summary, while the rare business impact could be extrapolated from rare customer complaints and their feedback attitude, we still can no establish the well casual relationship between it and the ultimate business impact conclusion. This margarine surrogate with butter is such an phenomenon that we need more considerations for alternative explanations that account for the facts presented in the passage.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not exactly
argument 2 -- not exactly
argument 3 -- wrong
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 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: 555 350
No. of Characters: 2936 1500
No. of Different Words: 263 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.854 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.29 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.783 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 227 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 132 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 84 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.13 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.184 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.484 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 209, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'servers'' or 'server's'?
Suggestion: servers'; server's
... the little customer complaints and the servers feedback about customers attitude to su...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 713, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: isn't
...ssume that such 2 percentage complaints isnt a impartial reflection for the real cus...
^^^^
Line 5, column 718, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
... that such 2 percentage complaints isnt a impartial reflection for the real custo...
^
Line 5, column 796, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...stomer status, thus it could weaken the authors explanation. Moreover, the author ...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 811, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...cost. Without further investigation, we dont which explanation could lead to such si...
^^^^
Line 13, column 291, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'margarines'' or 'margarine's'?
Suggestion: margarines'; margarine's
...ibute to such outgrowth as well. Taking margarines storage as example, after using margari...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 281, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...margarine surrogate with butter is such an phenomenon that we need more considerat...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, consequently, first, furthermore, however, if, moreover, so, still, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, in summary, 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: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 45.0 28.8173652695 156% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3019.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 552.0 441.139720559 125% => OK
Chars per words: 5.46920289855 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84713113593 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86738681771 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 273.0 204.123752495 134% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.494565217391 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 922.5 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.5396211712 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.260869565 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.78260869565 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0672386001984 0.218282227539 31% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.023670347956 0.0743258471296 32% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0344371993655 0.0701772020484 49% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0487281972992 0.128457276422 38% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0266257156926 0.0628817314937 42% => 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: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => 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: 14.74 12.5979740519 117% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.8 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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
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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.