"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
While it may be true that customers of Happy Pancake House do not distinguish butter from margarine and the study suggests a 98% of supportiveness the memorandum does not provide a cogent argument to support the Manager’s claim. The memorandum is rife with holes and instated assumptions considered by the Manager.
As Quoted by the manager the business of happy pancake house is a spread over the huge mass of southwestern Unites States. This covers over millions, if not thousands, of customers with variety of tastes and preferences. Keeping this in mind, and considering this fact, a sample space of 100 people cannot speak for the rest. The people in other restaurants may not adapt to the change and might prefer butter over margarine. This would divert the customers to other pancake alternative if not served butter as earlier.
Another flawed assumption is that the customers don’t complain meaning they like margarine over butter, whereas the reasons can vary. Pancake being a breakfast served food the people mostly consume during office hours mainly in a rush and hence they do not have time to complain over the butter-margarine issue. This is misunderstood as their preference.
considering, the complaints of the 2% people might not seem a larger mass in a sample space of 100. But if calculated the 2% of millions as sample space, it will make a huge loss for the company.
Finally, people not complaining might be because of no other competition present in the locality where happy Pancake House as its restaurant. But it cannot be neglected that there won't be in future. the next instance a new pancake shop/dine-in opens nearby, customers can walkaway from the Happy Pancake house for the new restaurant serving butter instead of margarine.
It is certainly tempting to conclude that margarine and butter is not distinguished and the decision of the happy pancake house company is making less of a change in the customer count and taste yet a detailed analysis reveals that the above stated flaws are possible and can make more of an impact on sales. hence conclusion by the manager holds no grounds.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 358 350
No. of Characters: 1732 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.35 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.838 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.697 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 128 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 88 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.867 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.48 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.637 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.082 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “As” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...umptions considered by the Manager. As Quoted by the manager the business of h...
^^
Line 7, column 2, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Considering
...misunderstood as their preference. considering, the complaints of the 2% people might ...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 189, Rule ID: IN_PAST[1]
Message: Did you mean: 'in the future'?
Suggestion: in the future
... cannot be neglected that there wont be in future. the next instance a new pancake shop/d...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 200, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: The
...neglected that there wont be in future. the next instance a new pancake shop/dine-i...
^^^
Line 11, column 310, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Hence
...nd can make more of an impact on sales. hence conclusion by the manager holds no grou...
^^^^^
Line 11, column 310, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: hence,
...nd can make more of an impact on sales. hence conclusion by the manager holds no grou...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, hence, if, may, so, whereas, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1784.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 355.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02535211268 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.34067318298 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78560644265 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 183.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.515492957746 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 556.2 705.55239521 79% => 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: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.5761265531 57.8364921388 113% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.941176471 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8823529412 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.82352941176 5.70786347227 49% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.289643691279 0.218282227539 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0840771618367 0.0743258471296 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0639275359007 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.139397027417 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0709763051755 0.0628817314937 113% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.89 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.41 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.