Ten years ago our company had two new regional office buildings built in two different regions. The buildings were erected by two different construction companies – Alpha and Zeta. Even though the two buildings had virtually identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build, and its expenses for maintenance last year were twice those of the building constructed by Alpha. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been higher than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Such data, plus the fact that Alpha has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, indicate that we should use Alpha Construction Company, rather than Zeta, for all future building projects.
The vice president of a large highly diversified company in a company states that the company should prefer Zeta instead of Alpha as their contemplated new project as it costs less even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs. The author of the argument substantiates his claim by saying that the building constructed by Zeta has less maintenance cost than Alpha, even though it took 30% more for Zeta to construct the building compared to Alpha. He further says that energy consumption of the buildings by Zeta were less expensive compared to Alpha. The argument now is ripe because of several unwarranted assumptions and a lack of solid evidence to back his claims. In order to fully evaluate the argument the following must be addressed
To begin, the author of the argument mentions that building expenses for Zeta have been half of that of Alpha, even though the two-building had similar floor plans. The author failed to mention the location of both the buildings constructed by Alpha and Zeta. Perhaps, it may be the case the expenses for things needed to maintain the building constructed by Zeeta are low because prices in its region are low and it may have nothing to do with Zeta. It can also be the case where even though the floor plan is identical, the building constructed by Alpha has more luxurious items as few people wanted it and it can be the reason for the increase in maintenance cost. Without considering above casing and failing to provide any evidence for it makes the argument water under the bridge
Furthermore, the author of the argument also states that the energy consumption of building built by Zeta is half of the energy consumption of Alpha constructed building. The author naively gives the total credit to Zeta for less consumption of energy. First of all, the author did not mention the climatic conditions for both buildings. It can be the case that the Alpha constructed building is situated in harsh climatic conditions and it needs more energy compared to Zeta to sustain. It can also be the case where people living in building done by Zeta are environmentally active and are vigilant not to misuse energy and waste power. Without considering the above situations and not giving any proofs to correctly evaluate the argument makes the argument even weaker
In conclusion, the argument as it stands now is seriously flawed due to absence of solid evidence or proofs to back the author's claims.
If the author is able to provide proofs preferably in a systematic format, it may be possible to evaluate the soundness of the argument
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 440 350
No. of Characters: 2120 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.58 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.818 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.654 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.444 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.636 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.389 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.376 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.53 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, furthermore, if, may, so, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2156.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 440.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 4.9 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57997565096 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68258463624 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.420454545455 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 68.1483349434 57.8364921388 118% => OK
Chars per sentence: 143.733333333 119.503703932 120% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.3333333333 23.324526521 126% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.4 5.70786347227 77% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.276528359654 0.218282227539 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.103845605717 0.0743258471296 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0832882587952 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127674383061 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.115379373179 0.0628817314937 183% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.73 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.16 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.