"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 here recommends Adams Realty over Fitch, based on his past experiences with both the firms. But the author bases his argument on just assumptions and previous experiences, without providing any conclusive evidence to support his clam. The authors stand is flawed for the following reasons.
To begin, the author assumes that the number of employees in the organization has a direct correlation with the efficiency and profitability of a firm. But maybe Fitch Reality operates in a much smaller region as compared to Adams, and may not need as many agents as the latter. It could also be possible that Fitch Reality sells only affordable homes to middle class customers while Adams target customers might be the rich, who are looking for expensive bungalows, which could also account for the higher average and greater revenues for Adams that the author mentions. This is not an accurate measure of efficiency of a firm, as Adams might only need to sell half as many homes as Fitch to make more revenue.
To add this, the author states an example of his previous experience with Fitch, that happened 10 years ago, and compares it with his experience with Adams just one year back. This argument does not hold any water, as it grossly fails to consider the socio-economic factors of two very distant times. How was the economy of the country doing 10 years back? Was it booming, where everyone had money to spend or was the economy going through a ‘lull’ where people are usually apprehensive about make big investments on homes. Also, it is not clearly mentioned the type of houses that he had listed with both the firms. If he listed a much expensive house with fitch, then it could explain why it took longer to sell it, as it is usually much harder to find customers willing to buy expensive houses.
Finally, in the example that the author provides, he fails to mention the locality or the type of neighborhood’s both these houses were in. If one was in a neighborhood very well known for its crime rates while the other listed with Adams was in a much safer neighborhood, with easily accessible amenities, then the comparison drawn between these two instances is automatically invalidated as they are two different scenarios. Another factor could be the connectivity to commercial and office spaces from the home. If the house that was listed with Fitch 10 years ago was in the outskirts of a city with limited connectivity to schools, offices and malls, while the one listed with Adams is much near to the heart of the city with better connectivity and access to schools, malls and offices, then the latter house is by default a much easier house to market and sell.
As mentioned above, there are many assumptions in the authors statements, that either needs clarification to be provided, or be substantiated with sufficient evidence before it can be decided as to which firm is better, Fitch or Adams.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 502 350
No. of Characters: 2367 1500
No. of Different Words: 235 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.733 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.715 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.593 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 68 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.904 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.301 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.537 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 66, Rule ID: PAST_EXPERIENCE_MEMORY[1]
Message: Use simply 'experiences'.
Suggestion: experiences
...s Adams Realty over Fitch, based on his past experiences with both the firms. But the author bas...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 103, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...he organization has a direct correlation with the efficiency and profitability of...
^^
Line 3, column 440, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
... spend or was the economy going through a 'lull' where people are usual...
^
Line 4, column 252, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ile the other listed with Adams was in a much safer neighborhood, with easily acc...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, if, look, may, so, then, well, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2441.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 502.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 4.8625498008 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7334296765 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7367683413 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 247.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.49203187251 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 766.8 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.4000222652 57.8364921388 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 135.611111111 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.8888888889 23.324526521 120% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.5 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => 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: 0.144286619159 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0473701481671 0.0743258471296 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0565069898431 0.0701772020484 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0870171374987 0.128457276422 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0454704935784 0.0628817314937 72% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.