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.
The memo states that the Alpha company is a better choice for the new building project than the Zeta company. Although the memo provides some convincing reasons for its claim, those reasons are based on many stated and unstated assumptions. The validity of these assumptions can directly affect the claim as I will explore one by one in this essay.
First, the regional headquarters was built in two different regions and the cost of raw materials and manpower in different regions can be dramatically different. For example, the costs of concrete, steel and glass in the UK may be two-times higher than those costs in China. Therefore, the building construction costs of these two headquarters cannot be directly compared to each other. The author can only imply that Zeta’s project is more expensive than Alpha’s project, if he assumes that those two regions have the same rate of construction materials and manpower. Otherwise, the claim can be flawed.
Second, the energy consumptions of buildings also depend on their location. Buildings in tropical zone need a lot of energy for the air conditioner system, while buildings in a moderate temperature zone do not need that much energy. Consequently, we can only compare the energy consumption between buildings in the regions of similar climates. If the two headquarters are located in the areas that have totally different climates, the energy consumption cannot be used as an indicator of construction companies’ performance.
Last but not least, the mentioned headquarters were built ten years ago. The performance of Alpha and Zeta at this time can be dramatically different from the previous decade. The memo states that Alpha has a little employee turnover but it does not mention about the workforce of Zeta. The Zeta Company may have re-organized their organization and hired a lot of new talent employees, so its current performance can be far much better than the Alpha company. Accordingly, the author should not assume that the performances of these two companies are the same as they were ten years ago. Instead, he should find the latest information about these companies to use as references.
All in all, the memo is based on many assumptions and if some of these assumptions prove unwarranted, the memo’s claim will be flawed.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK, but more. suppose buildings in the regions have similar climates, how to argue?
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 377 350
No. of Characters: 1880 1500
No. of Different Words: 180 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.406 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.987 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.79 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 129 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 98 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 73 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.251 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.684 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.307 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.543 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 6, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...struction companies' performance. Last but not least, the mentioned headqu...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 288, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ot mention about the workforce of Zeta. The Zeta Company may have re-organized thei...
^^^
Line 9, column 141, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
..., the memo's claim will be flawed.
^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['accordingly', 'also', 'but', 'consequently', 'first', 'if', 'may', 'second', 'so', 'therefore', 'while', 'for example']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.272093023256 0.25644967241 106% => OK
Verbs: 0.118604651163 0.15541462614 76% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0744186046512 0.0836205057962 89% => OK
Adverbs: 0.053488372093 0.0520304965353 103% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0232558139535 0.0272364105082 85% => OK
Prepositions: 0.132558139535 0.125424944231 106% => OK
Participles: 0.0255813953488 0.0416121511921 61% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.96523963909 2.79052419416 106% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0046511627907 0.026700313972 17% => Some infinitives wanted.
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.13023255814 0.113004496875 115% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0348837209302 0.0255425247493 137% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00232558139535 0.0127820249294 18% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2338.0 2731.13054187 86% => OK
No of words: 377.0 446.07635468 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.20159151194 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.4064143971 4.57801047555 96% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.358090185676 0.378187486979 95% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.281167108753 0.287650121315 98% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.214854111406 0.208842608468 103% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.159151193634 0.135150697306 118% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96523963909 2.79052419416 106% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 207.018472906 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.493368700265 0.469332199767 105% => OK
Word variations: 52.7217014339 52.1807786196 101% => OK
How many sentences: 19.0 20.039408867 95% => OK
Sentence length: 19.8421052632 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.1984085832 57.7814097925 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.052631579 141.986410481 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8421052632 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.631578947368 0.724660767414 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 3.58251231527 84% => OK
Readability: 47.9588161385 51.9672348444 92% => OK
Elegance: 2.20238095238 1.8405768891 120% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.380826131883 0.441005458295 86% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.111975985648 0.135418324435 83% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0685874822714 0.0829849096947 83% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.584623161791 0.58762219726 99% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.135926940892 0.147661913831 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.152260434953 0.193483328276 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.060318469691 0.0970749176394 62% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.335253587352 0.42659136922 79% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0637326465713 0.0774707102158 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.236858274115 0.312017818177 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0581228589761 0.0698173142475 83% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.33743842365 84% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 0.0 6.87684729064 0% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.82512315271 249% => Less neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 7.0 6.46551724138 108% => OK
Negative topic words: 0.0 5.36822660099 0% => More negative topic words wanted.
Neutral topic words: 10.0 2.82389162562 354% => OK
Total topic words: 17.0 14.657635468 116% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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More arguments wanted.
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.