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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 the memorandum, the author argues that the replacement of butter with margarin has almost no impact on thier customers. The author’s argument seems sound at first, however, lack of explanations leads me to question the soundness of the argument.
Fisrt, the customers of the Happy Pancake House might not be satisfied with the restaurants’ service. The exact number of customers should be afforded for substantiate the dissatisfaction of customers. 2 percent of complained customers might be significant if the number of total customer is large. Even if the total customer number is small, 2 percent of cutomers cannot indicate the happiness of the other 98 percent of customers. It is plausible that there should be more customers who have complains about butter but they just fell need not to tell them.
Second, the report from the servers is not reliable since there are many flaws. Servers might hesitate to tell their boss about the problem occured in the hall and also it is likely that they might forget what they heard. A survey, more compelling report, should be conducted on the customers. It would be more desirable report that explains whether the customers feel happy with the margarine.
Finally, the author should give more acceptable explanation on the customer’s awareness between butter and margarine. The customers might find differences between butter and margarine when they eat. They recognized the change but they merely do not want to make extra action during their pleasant meal. Even though they missed the change, the restaurant should afford them a information and ask them to get proper feedback.
In summary, the author’s argument explanations are not convincing on many grounds. To bolster the author’s argument, more specific and concrete information should be afforded on the things I mentioned above.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: In the memorandum, the author argues that the replacement of butter with margarin has almost no impact on thier customers.
Error: margarin Suggestion: margin
Error: thier Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: Even if the total customer number is small, 2 percent of cutomers cannot indicate the happiness of the other 98 percent of customers.
Error: cutomers Suggestion: customers
Sentence: Servers might hesitate to tell their boss about the problem occured in the hall and also it is likely that they might forget what they heard.
Error: occured Suggestion: No alternate word
---------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 296 350
No. of Characters: 1509 1500
No. of Different Words: 161 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.148 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.098 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.665 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 116 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 80 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.131 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.529 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.335 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.588 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 551, Rule ID: NEEDNT_TO_DO_AND_DONT_NEED_DO[1]
Message: Did you mean 'tell'?
Suggestion: tell
...bout butter but they just fell need not to tell them. Second, the report from the se...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 379, 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
...ange, the restaurant should afford them a information and ask them to get proper ...
^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, second, so, in summary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 55.5748502994 67% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1580.0 2260.96107784 70% => OK
No of words: 296.0 441.139720559 67% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.33783783784 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.14784890444 4.56307096286 91% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93750339975 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 160.0 204.123752495 78% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.540540540541 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 470.7 705.55239521 67% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 20.5999966406 57.8364921388 36% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 92.9411764706 119.503703932 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.4117647059 23.324526521 75% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.64705882353 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.123784439952 0.218282227539 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0451881037837 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0590250801336 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0660342098349 0.128457276422 51% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0285761651707 0.0628817314937 45% => 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: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.4 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 68.0 98.500998004 69% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.