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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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. further, 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 customers of Happy Pancake House have been served with margarine instead of butter. As the business manager suggests, they are not complaining about the change; this does not account for their appreciation for margarine. There could be numerical reasons behind such behavior.
The explanation suggests that 98 out of 100 customers are happy with the change. However, the basis for such conclusion was because 2 out of 100 people complained. There is no possibility of knowing if the other 98 people were happy or simply did not care to complain. Also, the situation in which the study was conducted needs description. Custoemrs could be in rush during busy hours to complin about their food preference or they may be taking take out orders for which they cannot give feedback immediately. Inaccuracy of explanation of collected data is present. For example, if a child is asked if they like going to school, few may say no. However that do not account for the neutral position of children who cannot weight between their likings for school playground and dislike for study. There may not be any extreme case such as they are happy to go to school.
Secondly, the study do not include the type of complaint they are getting for replaced use of margarine instead of butter. As the study did not conduct the satisfaction rate among customers rather only confined itself to collecting number of complaints, the graveness of compliants could well illuminate the actual scenario. If complaint comes from customers saying that it has allergic reaction to margarine, while other customers may be just bearing with the widespred change, this can compromise the reasoning.
Thirdly, the servers have reported that the customers did not complain that butter is being replaced by margerin. The explanation although accepting of reasoning such as the customers inability to distinguish margarine from butter did not explain if they were happy with the change. Additionaly, servers who are reporting the effects is a vaugue term as other servers may have been getting complaints which are not reported. They may be milking their superior with positive feedback, while others may be feeling indifferent to the whole situation. Thus, there is no way to know the ones not reporting did not get any complaints.
The explanation omits any different scenario and restrains itself within a set belief. Thus, although their expalantion is plausible does not account for the whole scenario for inaccuracy of explanation of collected data, detailed discussion of the opposite scenario and lack of validation of data source.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 424 350
No. of Characters: 2138 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.538 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.042 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.651 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.19 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.399 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.289 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.501 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.058 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 632, Rule ID: MANY_NN_U[6]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun may seems to be uncountable; consider using: 'little may'.
Suggestion: little may
... is asked if they like going to school, few may say no. However that do not account for...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 648, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...y like going to school, few may say no. However that do not account for the neutral pos...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 175, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'customers'' or 'customer's'?
Suggestion: customers'; customer's
...ough accepting of reasoning such as the customers inability to distinguish margarine from...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, third, thirdly, thus, well, while, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2194.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 424.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17452830189 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.53775939005 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73801150713 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.507075471698 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 668.7 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 47.2485077818 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 99.7272727273 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2727272727 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.81818181818 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.130051229692 0.218282227539 60% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0455194837793 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0702040551762 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0895900674661 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.080986066556 0.0628817314937 129% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
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: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.49 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 12.3882235529 52% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.