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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.
Based on insufficient evidence, business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants claim that customers are not capable to distinguish between butter and margarine. His conclusion is supported by the fact, that only 2 of 100 customers complained when they received margarine instead of butter. Having little evidence given in the memorandum, author's final statement is not convincing and additional evidence are required to strengthen his argumentation.
First and foremost, author boldly assumes that 98 out of 100 people who didn't complained about supplanting butter with margarine, were happy about the change. The fact that only 2 percent of people actually complained, does not necessary mean that the rest felt positive about the change. What if none out of the 98 people was brave enough, or have enough time to file a complain? In fact, some of this 98 people may never come to Happy Pancake House again, because they were might feel cheated.
Secondly, the author claims that the lack of complaints from clients that received margarine instead of butter, when they actually asked for butter, indicates that client that ask for butter actually means butter or margarine. This conclusion is unsupported. It may happen that the customer is not so fastidious to complain, but it cannot be concluded what the client really thinks. It would be not professional to take an order from a client and bring him different thing.
To recapitulate, there is not enough evidence to make such bold assumptions. There can be numerous alternative ways the facts provided in this example can be interpreted. Lack of complaints does not necessarily means that clients are happy about the order. Maybe the amount of tip received after the dissembling service would be a good measure of clients’ satisfaction?
- The following appeared as part of a letter to the editor of a scientific journal."A recent study of eighteen rhesus monkeys provides clues as to the effects of birth order on an individual's levels of stimulation. The study showed that in stimulating situ 47
- Workers in the small town of Leeville take fewer sick days than workers in the large city of Masonton 50 miles away Moreover relative to population size the diagnosis of stress related illness is proportionally much lower in Leeville than in Masonton Acco 86
- The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner."Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central 83
- Some people believe that college students should consider only their own talents and interests when choosing a field of study. Others believe that college students should base their choice of a field of study on the availability of jobs in that field.Writ 75
- The best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagre 65
flaws:
No. of Words: 291 350
No. of Different Words: 164 200
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 291 350
No. of Characters: 1476 1500
No. of Different Words: 164 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.13 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.072 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.704 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 107 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 77 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.701 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.538 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.058 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5