The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 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 do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The memorandum asserts that customers are not able to perceive the difference between butter and margarine and they are using same term for both the items. To support the claim, it points out to two evidences namely the recent change from butter to margarine had little impact on the customers and customers do not object to serving margarine when asked for butter. Its chain of reasoning seems true at first sight, however, it is based on certain unwarranted assumptions about comparison between butter and margarine. Therefore, in order to better evaluate the claim and analyse its logical soundness, additional explanation is required that is foundational to the line of reasoning.
First of all, are butter and margarine comparable? In other words, the manager has assumed that there is a significant different between the taste, appearance and health effects of butter and margarine but customers do not heed to the recent change, therefore, assumed to be congruous to this change. However, it may be the case that the taste of butter and margarine is so close to each other that customers’ perception does not recognise it. Thus, they are accepting margarine when asked for butter. Further, it may also be the case that recent scientific study explained the positive effects of consuming margarine instead of butter, thus customers are willing to include margarine in their diet. Thus, they do not object to the servings of margarine and accepting it with no complain when they ordered butter. Therefore, unless these explanations are considered, the claim remains unsupported.
Secondly, are customers aware about margarine? In other words, the manager has assumed that the product margarine is known to customers and they are happy accepting it instead of a butter, thus made no complaints. However, it may be the case that the product margarine is not known to customers at all or its customers are those not familiar with the nuances of butter or margarine. Therefore, they are nonchalant about butter or margarine. Further, it may also be the case that recent changes are not reflecting potential results since changes take time to be noticed or manager has come to his conclusion just after 2 months of implementing this change and in this 2 months, customers has not yet noticed the change, thus their silence is considered as their consent. Therefore, the approach of manager to jump to conclusion immediately after implementing the change cannot support his claim.
Finally, are customer happy? In other words the manager has assumed that people are happy because of complaints filed by only 2 per cent of the customers. However, it may be the case that these 2 per cent represent significant number of customer in absolute terms and is equal to the customers its competitor has. Thus, as these small proportional change of customer starts moving from Happy Pancake to its competitors, it may likely that others would follow suit, this would give opposite results. Further, the term many servers which the manager has assumed may give conflicting results. For example, he may find that servers who reported that customers did not object to margarine are only 51 per cent of the total servers this Pancake has, however, other 49 per cent may have reported that customers actually objected to blatant serving of butter instead of margarine, thus would make his inference on maximum number of servers misleading. Therefore, unless these explanation are provided, the claim is significantly weakened.
Therefore, while concluding, with the lack of comprehensive chain of reasoning, the claim as it stands now is considerably flawed. If the manager is able to offer explanation, perhaps in the form of research study covering the ostensible differences between butter and margarine, awareness among people for these two different products and absolute value of customers objected to this change, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the claim.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 26 15
No. of Words: 645 350
No. of Characters: 3257 1500
No. of Different Words: 248 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.04 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.05 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.671 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 245 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 193 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 128 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 101 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.808 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.858 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.923 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.502 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 762, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...vers this Pancake has, however, other 49 per cent may have reported that customer...
^^
Line 7, column 964, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this explanation' or 'these explanations'?
Suggestion: this explanation; these explanations
...f servers misleading. Therefore, unless these explanation are provided, the claim is significantl...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, while, for example, first of all, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 35.0 19.6327345309 178% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 58.0 28.8173652695 201% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 83.0 55.5748502994 149% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3351.0 2260.96107784 148% => OK
No of words: 645.0 441.139720559 146% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.19534883721 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.03952876749 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.79143659468 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 264.0 204.123752495 129% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.409302325581 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1062.9 705.55239521 151% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 14.0 4.96107784431 282% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 85.9612975388 57.8364921388 149% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.884615385 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8076923077 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.69230769231 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.166826515891 0.218282227539 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0573595843692 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0380821770321 0.0701772020484 54% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.102467021063 0.128457276422 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0274471031282 0.0628817314937 44% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 121.0 98.500998004 123% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.