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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 argument, the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants claims that all of the branches of the Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the country should provide margarine instead of butter. The manager points out that only a few customers has complained about the change made in the restaurants located in the southwestern part of United states, and they are even unable to distinguish butter and margarine, so all of the other Happy Pancake House restaurants should apply this change to save money. Nevertheless, this recommendation is based on faulty assumptions.
First of all, the author is assuming that the replacement of butter with margarine in southwestern branches was held for an enough period time to collect valid data. As the manager is suggesting a major change to his or her company based on the data derived from the recent tryout in southwestern branches, clarifying how long did they applied the change matters a lot. If butter has been replaced by margarine for only one day and all the data provided in the memorandum is based on that single day, it will be hard to take those data as valid and further generalize the outcome. Therefore, without the exact information about how long has this change from butter to margarine been applied, assuming the data driven from southwestern branches’ case is valid will be faulty.
Secondly, believing that customers are satisfied with the change because only 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint could be problematic. What if there are customers who are not mad about the change but not really happy at the same time? What if the process of claiming the dissatisfaction is so complicated that people with complaint often fail to submit official form? Concluding that everyone but that 2 percent who has officially shown their dissatisfaction is happy with the replacement could be erroneous.
Next, though many customers who received margarine instead of butter did not complain, assuming the reason is mainly because they are unable to differentiate between the two or the term they use is just the same for the two could be risky. With my common sense, distinguishing margarine and butter with bare eyes is not easy. However, by actually using them while cooking, people can say the difference with their smell and taste. As the author is citing the servers’ report, the report probably does not include the portion of the customers who later found out the difference. In addition, the author is saying that ‘many’ servers have reported and no one can actually know how many is considered as ‘many’ if the author does not cites the concrete number or percentage. So, this assumption is based on unwarranted facts.
Even if all the previous assumptions that the manager has made turned out to be true, almost all of the customers are happy with the replacement and not many people can distinguish margarine from butter, they are all based on the customers of Happy Pancake House restaurants that are located in the southwestern part of the country. There is no guarantee that all of the customers of other restaurants located nationwide will accept the change as the same way the southwestern people did. It is possible that majority of southwestern dishes does not really distinguish the use of butter and margarine, so they are less sensitive to the change, but the eastern part of the country’s recipes often divide the use of margarine and butter. If that is the case, customers in the eastern part of US will react differently than the southwestern people.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
this is a new GRE topic which is different to traditional topics. look:
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
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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: 21 15
No. of Words: 595 350
No. of Characters: 2914 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.939 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.897 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.731 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 142 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 102 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 76 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.852 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 87, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...y Pancake House restaurants claims that all of the branches of the Happy Pancake House res...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 434, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...to distinguish butter and margarine, so all of the other Happy Pancake House restaurants s...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 758, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'does' requires base form of the verb: 'cite'
Suggestion: cite
...'many' if the author does not cites the concrete number or percentage. So, ...
^^^^^
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...umption is based on unwarranted facts. Even if all the previous assumpt...
^^^
Line 9, column 102, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
... has made turned out to be true, almost all of the customers are happy with the replacemen...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 369, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...the country. There is no guarantee that all of the customers of other restaurants located ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, however, if, nevertheless, really, second, secondly, so, therefore, while, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 35.0 19.6327345309 178% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3023.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 595.0 441.139720559 135% => OK
Chars per words: 5.08067226891 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.93888872473 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91130278752 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 248.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.416806722689 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 937.8 705.55239521 133% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 73.3343846554 57.8364921388 127% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.952380952 119.503703932 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.3333333333 23.324526521 121% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.80952380952 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.312427022427 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0909251803697 0.0743258471296 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.10732953858 0.0701772020484 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.183461340731 0.128457276422 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.132609343513 0.0628817314937 211% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.48 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.