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"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 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 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 specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the memorandum, the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants agues that to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and increase profitability, the company should extend some cost-saving changes to its other chain of restaurants in the southeast and northeast section of its customer base. In arriving at this conclusion, the manager bolsters the argument with 1. 2 percent of customers in the southwestern United States have complained indicating a very low number. 2. Customers do not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter. 3. Either customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or the use “butter” more generically to indicate butter or margarine. At the surface, this argument seems cogent but a deeper dive reveals that the assumptions are unwarranted and the argument as it stands is quite unpersuasive.
First, the manager has committed an error in providing an unrepresentative statistical data. 2 percent of a particular customer base segment does not represent a sufficient sample size making the assumption unwarranted. Even if we assume that this sample size is sufficient, the mere fact that just 2 percent have complained does not equate that the reminder 98 percent are happy about the change. Some customers may not have complained just to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to themselves but would have such conversations with their friends, relatives, or colleagues during casual discussions which may not be good for the business. To bolster this statistical data, there should be a survey to evaluate the level of satisfaction amongst customers which will ascertain the accurate percentage of those that are happy with such change. Failure to carry out this survey, renders the assumption unwarranted.
Secondly, the assumption that customers are not able to distinguish between butter and margarine is totally flawed. It is possible that servers are not reporting cases of complaints in which customers express to the company. That may be the case if the company operates a system that do not encourage honest feedback. What is the feedback mechanism put in place at the company, does it accommodate for anonymous complaints by employees? Do employees receive backlash as a result of giving negative feedback though honest. These are some of the questions that may be needed to ascertain the claims that customers do not complain when they are given margarine instead of butter. Indeed, there may be some customers that use a more generic term butter for either margarine or butter but the claim that customers do not complain has to be substantiated with evidence, less it amounts to a particularly poor assumption.
Furthermore, the memorandum fails to establish if butter is expense more that margarine. There is no data that shows the expenditure for both substance that warrants the conclusion that the removal of butter would increase profitability. Does butter cost so much compared to margarine, what is the cost of the fall out if it happens that eventually they lose a lot of their customer base since they plan to extend this unproven approach to the southeastern and northeastern part of the United States.
Finally, if we agree that indeed 2 percent represents a sizeable number of the population and that customers do not complain when margarine is replaced with butter. Assuming that this will be applicable to other part of the country is quite unwarranted. Failure to provide that the whole country is largely homogenous renders this particularly a poor advice.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 566 350
No. of Characters: 2922 1500
No. of Different Words: 253 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.878 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.163 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.907 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 226 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 174 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 130 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 94 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.963 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.625 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.267 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.267 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 532, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ative feedback though honest. These are some of the questions that may be needed to ascerta...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 344, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'poor advice'.
Suggestion: poor advice
...ly homogenous renders this particularly a poor advice.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, furthermore, if, may, second, secondly, so, as to, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 29.0 13.6137724551 213% => Less relative clauses wanted (maybe 'which' is over used).
Pronoun: 49.0 28.8173652695 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2982.0 2260.96107784 132% => OK
No of words: 566.0 441.139720559 128% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26855123675 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.87757670434 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99185424096 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 263.0 204.123752495 129% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.464664310954 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 935.1 705.55239521 133% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.8811704726 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.28 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.64 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.32 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.271171069526 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0688817456779 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0724236423549 0.0701772020484 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.144181215807 0.128457276422 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.102129467524 0.0628817314937 162% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.74 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 144.0 98.500998004 146% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.