"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
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.
The author of this letter claims that Adams Realty is superior to the Fitch Realty company due Adams Realty consisting of more agents, higher revenue and claims of faster sales. While the provided statistic of higher revenue and average sales supports his statement, there are several aspects to the argument that require further review.
The first argument needing additional analyzation is based on the number of employees each company has. Citing the first piece of evidence that the author provided, Adams Realty has 40 total agents (presumably all fulltime) compared to Fitch Realty who sports 25. While it is true that Adams will be able to service more clients at one time because they have more staff, the quality of service remains in question. The number of employees is in no way causally related to neither the productivity of the workers nor the quality of service the workers provide. It is very possible that the employees of Adams realty are over-worked and pushed to sell houses as fast as possible, while Fitch employees may be more interested in ensuring their customers buy quality homes at affordable prices.
The second argument that should be evaluated further is the claim that Adams realty sells faster than Fitch. Although Adams was able to sell the author’s house in a quarter of the time, it is unfair to generalize this to all houses and times. The seller could have tried to sell his house with Fitch during a recession, when there were lesser buyers on the market making the sale take longer and the asking price less than usual. In addition to the differing times, it is also unfair to use the author’s experiences with the companies as valid evidence because the quality and condition of the homes are unknown. The author’s first home that was sold by Fitch might have been run-down or unkept, making it less appealing for buyers while the author’s second house could have been much nicer and larger, making it easier for Adams to find a buyer and sell for more money.
Finally, an implication that was not mentioned regards the price of the two companies. Maybe Adams does out perform Fitch, but they are less affordable than Fitch. Even if Adams provides better quality service, they do a customer no good if they cannot afford them.
In the end, the claim made by the author of the letter stating that Adams is superior to Fitch rests on many assumptions that are unfair and carry no merit. The sellers of the house should further investigate.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 426 350
No. of Characters: 2017 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.543 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.735 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.266 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 92 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 55 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.059 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.595 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.571 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, may, second, so, while, in addition, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2082.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 426.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.88732394366 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54310108192 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.43264984572 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485915492958 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 648.9 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => 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: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.7234363426 57.8364921388 93% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.470588235 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.0588235294 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.58823529412 5.70786347227 80% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.300037168428 0.218282227539 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.100186712647 0.0743258471296 135% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0918264568855 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.176203612616 0.128457276422 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0451218905635 0.0628817314937 72% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.38 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.