The following appeared in a letter from a firm providing investment advice to a client.
"Homes in the northeastern United States, where winters are typically cold, have traditionally used oil as their major fuel for heating. Last year that region experienced 90 days with below-average temperatures, and climate forecasters at Waymarsh University predict that this weather pattern will continue for several more years. Furthermore, many new homes have been built in this region during the past year. Because these developments will certainly result in an increased demand for heating oil, we recommend investment in Consolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retail sale of home heating oil."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In this memo, the author recommends investment in Consolidated Industries to investors. Because he believes that the consumption of heating oil will be increased for several years. It is a plausible opinion at first glance. However, unreasonable assumptions and lack of information lead me to question the validity of this article.
First of all, the author assumes that the cold weather causes the increase in heating oil consumption in the northeastern United States. However, he does not provide critical information about the causal relationship between cold weather and heating oil consumption. For example, even though the author stated 90 days of below-average temperatures last year in this article, he does not present any data about heating oil consumption during the same period. If there was no significant change in heating oil sales last year, the author’s assumption could be wrong. To support his argument, the author should give exact sales data of heating oil last year.
Second, the author argues that the homes in the northeastern area usually use oil as their prevalent fuel for heating and assumes that the trend will be consistent for several years. However, he ignores other alternative sources of energy for heating in this memo. Nowadays, the utilization of solar power, natural gas, and electricity is increasing for heating homes. The new homes built in this region may adopt these new energy sources for heating. If so, even if the day below-average temperature will be increased, there would be no significant change in energy consumption in this area. Thus, the new homes may adopt new state-of-art technologies with high energy efficiency. In this case, the energy consumption may not change substantially. To validate his assertion, the author should provide detailed information about the heating energy sources of newly built homes in this area.
In addition, the author quotes the result of climate forecasting by Waymarsh University. However, it is impossible to predict the climate in a specific region because of technological limitations such as lack of meteorological data, the performance of prediction models, and the shortage of appropriate computational equipment. Additionally, the cold weather of last year could be an aberration compared with the long-term climate trend. The author needs to provide more convincing evidence to answer this problem.
Lastly, the author recommends investment in Consolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retail sale of home heating oil. To ensure his recommendation is reasonable or not, the author has to provide concrete evidence about the market share of Consolidated Industries. If there are many competitive companies in this region, even if the heating oil sales increase, the total sales of the Consolidated Industry would not change significantly. In addition, if there are more profitable investment opportunities in other industries such as an Internet technology company or a retail company that has a high market share in this area, it would be a better investment decision for investors.
In conclusion, the assertion regarding increasing demands for heating oil is invalid in many aspects, and the recommendation about the investigation is not convincing. To bolster the author's opinion, he needs to show more precise information stated in this essay.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 525 350
No. of Characters: 2786 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.787 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.307 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.026 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 165 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 108 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 83 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.444 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.647 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.535 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.131 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 184, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ation is not convincing. To bolster the authors opinion, he needs to show more precise ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, lastly, may, regarding, second, so, thus, as to, for example, in addition, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 31.0 16.3942115768 189% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2867.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 525.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 5.46095238095 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.78673985869 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.09781050614 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451428571429 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 906.3 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 18.0 8.76447105788 205% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 49.1221707004 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.185185185 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.4444444444 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.85185185185 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.215108446358 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0649091332866 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0506701472387 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.11153360678 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.052109682519 0.0628817314937 83% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.73 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 138.0 98.500998004 140% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.0 12.3882235529 57% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.