The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company."Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two different regions. The buildings were erected by two differe

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.

"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two different regions. The buildings were erected by two different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Even though the two buildings had 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 rather than Zeta for our contemplated new building project."

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 his memo, vice president of highly diversified company advocated to use construction services of Alpha Company as opposed to Zeta Company. His arguments in favor of Alpha and not Zeta Company are as follows. First, while constructing two building with identical floor plans, Zeta’s constructions cost third as much. Second, out of ten years last year expenses for maintenance were twice as Alpha’s building. Third, energy consumption for Zeta building was higher every year since construction then Alpha’s. Forth, Alpha’s company has a stable employees with little turnover rate. Even though author’s arguments seem logical at first and have some merit, each assumption needs to be thoroughly checked and analyzed. There could be some deeps and holes in each premise which would undermine the conclusion.

First, the author assumes that if two buildings have identical floor plans they should cost the same amount. However, the cost also depends on the location and the ground. For instance, if building is located in mountains, it would cost more to transport materials and employees, which would add to the cost. In case, building’s ground is more dense and complicated to dig, it would increase the cost of the construction even if the floor plan is the same. Accordingly, ground work and transportation could add up to overall cost, which would undermine the author’s argument.

Second, vice president mentioned that only one year the cost of maintenance cost for Zeta building was twice as much as Alpha’s building. However, just one year do not show the whole picture. In case, all the other nine years cost of maintenance of Alpha’s building was higher then argument is seriously flawed. The author need to present holistic picture showing maintenance cost fluctuation over the whole decade.

Thirdly, vice president states that energy consumption for Zeta building is higher then Alpha’s each year since construction. Since the author told us nothing about regions of two building, the region for Zeta’s building location could be at a colder or hotter location then Alpha’s building, hence, the energy consumption is higher. For instance, Zeta’s building could be at Hawaii and air conditioning costs are sky rocketing as temperature is 100 degrees outside and Alpha’s building could be located at San Francisco with its mild and stable weather.

Last vice president’s argument in favor’s of Alpha’s company is that Alpha has less turnover and stable workforce. But, the author fails to mention the period of time for Alpha’s lesser turnover. Had the company had a stable workforce and small turnover rate for the whole decade or only for the last year? Zeta Company could have increase in turnover only for the last couple of years but could have been stable eight years before.

As a result, vice president needs to check all his assumptions against verified information and provide evidentiary support for each premise, and then he could be able to convince readers. The author’s assumptions as they stand right now render his conclusion invalid as locations of building could play important role in building price difference and companies could have lesser of bigger turnover for only short period of time.

Votes
Average: 5.5 (2 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Sentence: As a result, vice president needs to check all his assumptions against verified information and provide evidentiary support for each premise, and then he could be able to convince readers.
Error: evidentiary Suggestion: No alternate word

argument 1 -- not OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK

argument 4 -- OK

flaws:
No. of Words: 521 350

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 521 350
No. of Characters: 2644 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.778 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.075 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 145 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.84 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.341 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.72 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.565 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.135 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5