The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In the given memorandum, the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants suggests that the company should extend its use of margarine instead of butter to its restaurants in the Southeast and Northeast as well in order to increase profitability. However, the argument is flawed for numerous following reasons, as it relies on unwarranted explicit and implicit assumptions.
Firstly, the author hastily assumes that 98 percent of customers must be happy with their change from butter to margarine simply because they have never explicitly appealed their opinions. However, the author fails to ask whether the 98 percent customers are really happy about the change, or they simply do not express their frustration. If the latter is the case, they may not come back to dine at a Happy Pancake House restaurant, this in turn would be detrimental for the profitability of the company. Thus, the author should find out what customers think about their use of margarine for butter, instead of simply generalizing the opinion of 2 percent of customers.
Secondly, even if the assumption above is somehow guaranteed to be true, the author unreasonably assumes that customers, who were served with margarine when they asked for butter, are either not able to distinguish butter from margarine or simply use the term margarine to indicate butter. However, the author should ask if there is any other possibility. Perhaps, for example, the customers might have not talked to their servers even if they were not happy about receiving margarine. If this is the case, the unsatisfied customers might not come back to the restaurant or not recommend the restaurant to other potential customers. Even worse, they may write a review on the on-line website, which could threat the restaurant’s reputation. Thus, to evaluate the argument adequately, the author should clarify whether or not customers can distinguish butter from margarine as well as they really use the term “butter” to mean margarine.
Lastly, even conceding all the assumptions above somehow turned out to be true, this argument is still dubious in that the author makes false analogy by claiming that the strategy of using margarine instead of butter would work in other regions simply because it worked in Northwestern United States. However, common sense tells us that customers in different area do not necessarily to be the same. Thus, the author should ask what would ensure the success of the strategy in Northwestern lead to the same success in other regions, such as Southeast and Northeast. This can be, for example, people in Northeast and Southeast have similar dining pattern as the people in Southeast, such as they do not distinguish butter from margarine or call margarine as “butter.” Without elucidating the similarities among those markets, which firmly substantiate the same success, this argument would not be cogent.
In sum, the argument is a specious one. Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make cogent case that the Happy Pancake House restaurants should extent their strategy of serving margarine instead of butter in order to increase their profitability.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. here goes the argument:
Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine.
suggested:
Maybe margarine and butter have similar flavor and color, so it is likely that customer will not acknowledge that Pancake has chosen margarine to replace butter which triggers no complaints among customers. Another explanation is that customers indeed discriminate the difference between butter and margarine since they have disparate tastes. But the reason why those customers don't complain is because they like the flavor of margarine.
argument 3 -- OK
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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: 19 15
No. of Words: 509 350
No. of Characters: 2607 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.75 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.122 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.698 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 146 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.789 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.665 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.842 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.083 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 816, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...t adequately, the author should clarify whether or not customers can distinguish butter from m...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'really', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'thus', 'well', 'for example', 'such as', 'as well as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.235701906412 0.25644967241 92% => OK
Verbs: 0.138648180243 0.15541462614 89% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0675909878683 0.0836205057962 81% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0918544194107 0.0520304965353 177% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0363951473137 0.0272364105082 134% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.126516464471 0.125424944231 101% => OK
Participles: 0.0225303292894 0.0416121511921 54% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.9438962517 2.79052419416 105% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0311958405546 0.026700313972 117% => OK
Particles: 0.00346620450607 0.001811407834 191% => OK
Determiners: 0.0935875216638 0.113004496875 83% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0311958405546 0.0255425247493 122% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0103986135182 0.0127820249294 81% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3213.0 2731.13054187 118% => OK
No of words: 509.0 446.07635468 114% => OK
Chars per words: 6.31237721022 6.12365571057 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74984508646 4.57801047555 104% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.402750491159 0.378187486979 106% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.304518664047 0.287650121315 106% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.218074656189 0.208842608468 104% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.14931237721 0.135150697306 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9438962517 2.79052419416 105% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 207.018472906 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.428290766208 0.469332199767 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 48.8584377466 52.1807786196 94% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 28.2777777778 23.2022227129 122% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.4903375844 57.7814097925 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 178.5 141.986410481 126% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.2777777778 23.2022227129 122% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.944444444444 0.724660767414 130% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 58.7296441825 51.9672348444 113% => OK
Elegance: 1.44155844156 1.8405768891 78% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.441944486145 0.441005458295 100% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.144816338046 0.135418324435 107% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0884139859855 0.0829849096947 107% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.620437449224 0.58762219726 106% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.151851896624 0.147661913831 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.19839602375 0.193483328276 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0894293465225 0.0970749176394 92% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.457810485466 0.42659136922 107% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0773075726547 0.0774707102158 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.3292639779 0.312017818177 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0675185254344 0.0698173142475 97% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.33743842365 108% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.87684729064 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.82512315271 62% => OK
Positive topic words: 9.0 6.46551724138 139% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 3.0 2.82389162562 106% => OK
Total topic words: 18.0 14.657635468 123% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 79.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.75 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: 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.