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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 is about the replacement of butter with margarine. It is said that only 2 percent of customers have complained about this subject, and consequently, 98 percent of them are satisfied. At first glance, it seems the argument is acceptable but with an accurate look, we can see that it has some weaknesses.
Firstly, the manager has failed to provide some accurate statistical figures about the satisfaction of customers from this replacement. He only has said that 2 percent of them had been unsatisfied. How did he find this figure? What method has used for this research? Are they sure that their method is correct? Have they asked all of their customers about the replacement of butter with margarine? Are they sure that all customers have given their comments about this replacement? According to the figure mentioned above, we cannot say that surly 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change.
Are they sure that their customers know about the difference between the types of butter? To strengthen their argument, they have to categorize their customers. For example, customers who like the previous butter, customers who prefer margarine and customers who are indifferent to this subject. Then they have to analyze the number of each group and then decide based on the results.
The conclusion only based on the figures mentioned above is not reliable. They also have to consider that 2 percent of people who have complained about this change belongs to what group of their customers. If they belong to their loyal customers, they have to consider a better strategy to deal with this problem.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.0 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 270 350
No. of Characters: 1312 1500
No. of Different Words: 127 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.054 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.859 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.526 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 85 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 65 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 47 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.406 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.389 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.342 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, first, firstly, if, look, so, then, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 2.0 12.9520958084 15% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 28.8173652695 146% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => 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: 1352.0 2260.96107784 60% => More number of characters wanted.
No of words: 270.0 441.139720559 61% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.00740740741 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.05360046442 4.56307096286 89% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66502006777 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 130.0 204.123752495 64% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.481481481481 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 416.7 705.55239521 59% => syllable counts are too short.
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 22.8473053892 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.2803282273 57.8364921388 58% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 75.1111111111 119.503703932 63% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.0 23.324526521 64% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0926786177738 0.218282227539 42% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0363425475656 0.0743258471296 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0297638859848 0.0701772020484 42% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.059375545325 0.128457276422 46% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0431311619196 0.0628817314937 69% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.7 14.3799401198 67% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 64.71 48.3550499002 134% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.0 12.197005988 66% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.19 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.6 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 55.0 98.500998004 56% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 7.0 12.3882235529 57% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 8.0 11.1389221557 72% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.