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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
At first glimpse, the argument seems to be plausible. However, a closer scrutiny of the evidences reveals that, a lot of significant queries yet to be responded to consider the argument valid and irrefutable. In this assertion, the author concludes that, in order to avoid the expense of the purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should use margarine instead of butter. To substantiate the conclusion, the author cites several evidences like, customers cannot differ the difference between the butter and the margarine, they don’t complain and so on. Before the argument can be properly examined, three assumptions must be evaluated.
Firstly, the actual number of the customers who filed the complaint and the total number of customers should be provided. Is the 98 percent of the customers who didn’t file complaint significantly resemble the whole population? The author hasn’t provided any additional information with the percentage. It may be possible that, the number of customer who had taken the margarine was very high, and thus the number of complaints that had been filed it is significantly larger. Perhaps, almost ten thousand or more people had taken the margarine to eat, and so two percent of ten thousand is not a negligible number of complaints. If the above scenario has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, the behavior and satisfaction level of the customers should be properly investigated. Were the customers truly didn’t differentiate between the butter and margarine, or they simply didn’t file any complaint just because they were unwilling to go for any discord. It may be possible that, the customers realized the difference between the butter and the margarine. Nevertheless, they didn’t file any complaint just because, they didn’t want to dispute with the restaurant. Perhaps, they had decided not to come further in the restaurant and they had found an alternative restaurant. If the above assumption is true, the argument doesn’t hold water.
Last but not least, the author should provide the reason relying which he had come to a decision about the whole country based on the assumptions of the assumptions made in Southwestern United States. Is the people and environment of Southwestern United States resembles the whole country? It may be possible that, the people of the Southwestern part are less intelligent than other states. Perhaps they truly cannot differentiate among the butter and margarine. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that the other states of United States will not differentiate among these two. Therefore, if the above assumption is true, the argument is totally flawed.
Therefore, the argument can be considered as untenable, due to lack of persuasive evidences and unstated assumptions. To further fortifying the argument the author should answer the above three questions and provide the evidences as follows: he should provide the actual number of the customer and the complaints. Moreover, he also should provide the behavior and satisfaction level of the customers. Furthermore, he must provide the assumptions based on which he can draw a conclusion about the whole country. By starting these evidences and unstated assumptions, the argument can be considered as tenable and irrefutable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 28 15
No. of Words: 530 350
No. of Characters: 2716 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.798 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.125 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.903 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 207 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 159 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 123 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.929 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.116 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.295 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.486 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, nevertheless, nonetheless, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 22.0 11.1786427146 197% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2859.0 2260.96107784 126% => OK
No of words: 521.0 441.139720559 118% => OK
Chars per words: 5.48752399232 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.77759609229 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.07615932277 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.426103646833 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 883.8 705.55239521 125% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 17.0 8.76447105788 194% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 40.6224999231 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.107142857 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.6071428571 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.92857142857 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.0943594915853 0.218282227539 43% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0258444860861 0.0743258471296 35% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0343686175087 0.0701772020484 49% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0537435986586 0.128457276422 42% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0269753572709 0.0628817314937 43% => 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: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.75 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.56 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.95 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.