"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase — and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."
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 memorandum from the planning department of a power company, the author concludes that electricity demand will not increase and existing power plants are enough to supply the existing demand. The author has drawn the conclusion based on two premises: survey about the attitude of home owners towards energy conservations and promotion of companies towards marketing energy efficient devices. Before complete evaluation of the contention can be made the author of the argument must justify following three assumptions with evidences.
Firstly, the author of the original argument makes premature assumption that the several recent surveys which showed an increased eagerness of the home owners in conserving energy are authentic and representative of most of the home owners in the city. The surveys might be giving misleading information about the home owners. For instance, it is possible that survey is conducted in only few households of specific location. For all we know, the participants of survey may have given their false opinion regarding their eagerness on energy conservation for the sake of reputation. If any of the above scenario have any merit, then the conclusion drawn from the original argument is seriously flawed.
Secondly, the author fallaciously assumes without any evidence that electricity is mostly used by home owners for heating purpose. This might not be the case. May be, they use electricity for irrigation purpose. What if the home owners use electricity to run other appliance like computer and laptops and use heating devices less as it proliferate the electricity bills. If above cases are true then argument does not hold water.
Finally even if above two assumptions are justified with sufficient evidences, the author makes premature assumption that the hydroelectric plants will follow previous twenty years trend and continue to provide enough electricity to sustain the city's electricity demand. For instance, three power stations are in verge of collapse and maintenance is required for continuation. If this is true then the conclusion is severely flawed.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is several flaws and holes due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. However, if the author is able to provide enough evidence regarding three aforementioned assumptions, then only full evaluation of the conclusions drawn from the original argument: the demand of electricity will be low in coming years and three power stations are sufficient.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 389 350
No. of Characters: 2083 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.441 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.355 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.862 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.699 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.308 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.534 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 399, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Before” 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.
...rds marketing energy efficient devices. Before complete evaluation of the contention c...
^^^^^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...wing three assumptions with evidences. Firstly, the author of the original argu...
^^^
Line 5, column 331, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[1]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...nd laptops and use heating devices less as it proliferate the electricity bills. I...
^^
Line 5, column 337, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'proliferates'?
Suggestion: proliferates
...tops and use heating devices less as it proliferate the electricity bills. If above cases a...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 372, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” 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.
...s it proliferate the electricity bills. If above cases are true then argument does...
^^
Line 7, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Finally,
... then argument does not hold water. Finally even if above two assumptions are justi...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 378, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” 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.
...intenance is required for continuation. If this is true then the conclusion is sev...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, firstly, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, then, for instance, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2134.0 2260.96107784 94% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.48586118252 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93188759494 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.493573264781 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 688.5 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.6495078056 57.8364921388 127% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.555555556 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.6111111111 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.83333333333 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.160570657237 0.218282227539 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.053254390996 0.0743258471296 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0768658803437 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0891341877618 0.128457276422 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0754411087843 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 33.24 48.3550499002 69% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.56 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.9 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.