"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
An article in the local newsletter of the Southwestern state mentions that recently in Happy Pancake House restaurants replaced butter with margarine. It also asserts that this change had very little impact on the customers, only 2% of the customers have complained till date. It also mentions that people are not complaining if they get margarine instead of butter due to either of the two reasons. First, People cannot distinguish between butter and margarine, or Southwestern people use margarine and butter terms alternatively. However, before directly concluding we must also consider other possibilities.
Firstly, Margarine might be costlier than butter. Butter is found in every household and it is used in almost every recipe. It is the natural tendency of people to happily accept whatever they get in complementary. Here, People are getting Margarine at the price of butter so they are pleased and are not complaining. Furthermore, Margarine is costly and not consumed daily so when people get Margarine occasionally they enjoy it and hence do not ask for butter. If the above assumption has merits it can be considered as one of the reasons for people not complaining when given Margarine.
Secondly, Margarine tastes crunchy and smooth as compared to butter. It has a crunchy texture which makes it distinguishable from butter. When consumed one can experience the crunchiness of Margarine. Moreover, Margarine comes in flavors and so it has fragrance while butter does not have a smell. So one can easily distinguish between Margarine and butter. It is the taste and smell of Margarine that customers like and do not complain when they are served Margarine.
Furthermore, Nutritionist mentions that Margarine has many health benefits and promotes weight loss. Butter has cholesterol and harmful to the body. People when served Margarine knowing the health benefits of Margarine they do not complain. People think in a way, they are consuming healthy food. Nowadays Many nutritionists are replacing butter with Margarine.
The article asserts that only 2 percent of people have complained about Margarine. However, one must also know that the Happy Pancake House restaurants chain in the southwestern states is not as famous as it is in the North. In southwestern, there are many alternatives and high competing restaurants to Happy Pancake. Moreover, The southwestern chain is at a great loss as it has hardly 10 customers per day. So, 2 percent accounts for a great number of customers. For example, if there are 50 people, 4 people complain about Margarine. It might also be possible other people do not complain this time but next time they will go to some other restaurant. If the above assumption holds water then it may be a reason for people's response to Margarine.
Thus before coming to the conclusion, one must consider the above assumptions. If any of the above assumptions are plausible it can be considered as a rival to the proposed explanation.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 32 15
No. of Words: 483 350
No. of Characters: 2436 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.688 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.043 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.853 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 184 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 102 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15.094 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.288 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.308 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 139, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “When” 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.
...h makes it distinguishable from butter. When consumed one can experience the crunchi...
^^^^
Line 6, column 2, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...on for peoples response to Margarine. Thus before coming to the conclusion, one mu...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, thus, while, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => 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: 2505.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 483.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.18633540373 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68799114503 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95884929056 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.449275362319 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 795.6 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 32.0 19.7664670659 162% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 22.8473053892 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 28.6702528492 57.8364921388 50% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 78.28125 119.503703932 66% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.09375 23.324526521 65% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.96875 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 16.0 8.20758483034 195% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 13.0 4.67664670659 278% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.259755836208 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0719622845571 0.0743258471296 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0710390031112 0.0701772020484 101% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136821357764 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.101615330333 0.0628817314937 162% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.6 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.25 48.3550499002 116% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.23 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.68 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.0 11.1389221557 72% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.