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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
The business manager of Happy Pancake House concludes that butter should be replaced with margarine across all the country. To support this initiative he presents the results that this change has yielded in the Southwest as evidence. While the argument might seem tenable at first glance, the author makes major assumptions that should be addressed before deciding whether to move forward with the proposal.
First, the manager assumes that 98% of the customers are glad with the change from butter to margarine, because they have not presented a formal complaint. Nevertheless, the author fails to consider other possibilities that may account for the lack of complaints. For example, some customers may be too lazy to fill out all the paperwork required to formally complain. Another plausible explanation is that clients might be unaware of their right to object to this change.
Additionally, the author does not cite specific evidence proving that the reason customers do not complain to waiters is because they do not care whether they get margarine or butter. They might be unhappy with the butter but not say anything to the server because of embarrassment.
Finally, constructing on the manager's assumption that replacing margarine with butter was a good strategy. The fact that something worked in the Southwest does not imply that it will work in the rest of the country. In fact, customers behaviour varies widely across regions.
To sum up, the manager's suggestion of replacing butter with margarine is potentially a beneficial option for Happy Pancake House. However, the author fails to provide conclusive evidence that customers will not miss the butter, and without such evidence stakeholders should be skeptical about the outcome.
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 278 350
No. of Characters: 1443 1500
No. of Different Words: 155 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.083 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.191 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.655 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.857 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.566 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.643 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.596 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.04 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 119, Rule ID: REASON_IS_BECAUSE[1]
Message: Probably an incorrect phrase. Use 'the reason 'is that''.
Suggestion: is that
...on customers do not complain to waiters is because they do not care whether they get marga...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 30, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...ment. Finally, constructing on the managers assumption that replacing margarine wit...
^^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 16, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...ely across regions. To sum up, the managers suggestion of replacing butter with mar...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, while, for example, in fact, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 11.0 19.6327345309 56% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => 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: 1491.0 2260.96107784 66% => OK
No of words: 278.0 441.139720559 63% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.36330935252 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.08329915638 4.56307096286 89% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73248026964 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 158.0 204.123752495 77% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.568345323741 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 450.0 705.55239521 64% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 34.2628644096 57.8364921388 59% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 106.5 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8571428571 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.78571428571 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.15270743297 0.218282227539 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0564416725125 0.0743258471296 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0828345037832 0.0701772020484 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0867000102602 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0471782564815 0.0628817314937 75% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.81 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.78 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 74.0 98.500998004 75% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.