Most homes in the northeastern United States, where winters are typically cold, have traditionally used oil as their major fuel for heating. Last heating season that region experienced 90 days with below- normal temperatures, and climate forecasters predict that this weather pattern will continue for several more years. Furthermore, many new homes are being built in the region in response to recent population growth. Because of these trends, we predict an increased demand for heating oil and recommend investment in Consolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retail sale of home heating oil.
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.
In the given letter from a firm providing investment advice for a client, it argues that the client should invest in Consolidated Industries. However, this argument is flawed for numerous reasons. Primarily, the argument is based on the unwarranted assumption that people will continue using the traditional heating system, which requires oil, and that the increased demand of heating oil will surely lead the company, Consolidated Industries, profitable.
The author of the letter unjustifiably assumes that most of the residents in the Northeastern United States would continue using the traditional heating system, which requires heating oil. By relying on such assumption, the author postulates that the heating oil consumption would increase. However, the author provides no adequate evidence to substantiate this assumption. It is entirely possible, for example, that the majority of residents in that area renovate their houses from oil heating to solar energy heating to save money. Moreover, the many new homes the author anticipates to be built in accordance of the population increase may not be equipped with the oil heating system, but other alternative heating system, which can save more money. In such case, the argument would lose its ground to argue that the oil consumption would increase.
Even if the assumption above is somehow guaranteed to be true, the author still unreasonably assumes that approximately 90 days of below normal temperatures will continue as the weather forecaster predicts. Firstly, it is not provided that how low the temperatures have been during the 90 days. If the temperatures were fairly mild even if it was below normal temperatures, it would weaken the argument. Secondly, even if the temperatures were significantly lower than the normal temperatures, it is still possible that the prediction of the forecaster may not correct. To corroborate the argument, the author should provide more convincing data, on which we can rely in predicting future winter temperatures.
Even conceding that the oil consumption will increase as the future winter temperatures will significantly decrease, the author makes an unwarranted assumption that such future situation would surely benefit Consolidated Industries. Although this might be the case, it is possible that it is other rivalry company who become successful, while Consolidated Industries is not as operating efficiently. Or, perhaps Consolidated Industries is actually based on other region than Northeastern United States, where the heating oil consumption is decreasing. Or, it is also possible that the cost of extracting and refining oil soars, so that the company may not perform well even with the increased heating oil consumption. In this case, the argument would become baseless.
In sum, the argument is a specious one. To corroborate it, the author should elucidate whether the extant houses and new houses will have traditional oil-based heating system; the temperatures will be significantly lower than normal temperature; and Consolidated Industries will be successful as the oil consumption increases.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. How are other days (not those 90 days) in the Last heating season? Maybe they are above - normal temperatures.
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 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: 476 350
No. of Characters: 2581 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.671 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.422 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.001 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 202 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.438 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.352 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.553 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.136 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'also', 'but', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'moreover', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'well', 'while', 'for example', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.248120300752 0.25644967241 97% => OK
Verbs: 0.152255639098 0.15541462614 98% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0864661654135 0.0836205057962 103% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0639097744361 0.0520304965353 123% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0244360902256 0.0272364105082 90% => OK
Prepositions: 0.118421052632 0.125424944231 94% => OK
Participles: 0.0394736842105 0.0416121511921 95% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.08160767706 2.79052419416 110% => OK
Infinitives: 0.015037593985 0.026700313972 56% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.110902255639 0.113004496875 98% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0451127819549 0.0255425247493 177% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0131578947368 0.0127820249294 103% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3126.0 2731.13054187 114% => OK
No of words: 476.0 446.07635468 107% => OK
Chars per words: 6.56722689076 6.12365571057 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67091256922 4.57801047555 102% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.430672268908 0.378187486979 114% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.327731092437 0.287650121315 114% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.260504201681 0.208842608468 125% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.186974789916 0.135150697306 138% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.08160767706 2.79052419416 110% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 207.018472906 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.439075630252 0.469332199767 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 49.2012306644 52.1807786196 94% => OK
How many sentences: 21.0 20.039408867 105% => OK
Sentence length: 22.6666666667 23.2022227129 98% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.1447145977 57.7814097925 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 148.857142857 141.986410481 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6666666667 23.2022227129 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.809523809524 0.724660767414 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 55.4397759104 51.9672348444 107% => OK
Elegance: 1.6875 1.8405768891 92% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.280557564186 0.441005458295 64% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.163983150515 0.135418324435 121% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.111646979219 0.0829849096947 135% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.596887417272 0.58762219726 102% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.166236027935 0.147661913831 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.121940163821 0.193483328276 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0559860948889 0.0970749176394 58% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.476654458541 0.42659136922 112% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0340229066693 0.0774707102158 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.196664606992 0.312017818177 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0242999614552 0.0698173142475 35% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.33743842365 144% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.87684729064 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.82512315271 0% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 12.0 6.46551724138 186% => OK
Negative topic words: 9.0 5.36822660099 168% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.82389162562 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 21.0 14.657635468 143% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.