The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants."Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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 im

Essay topics:

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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.

Submitted by Caiyuan on Wed, 10/14/2015 - 07:45

For the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants, their customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use both terms equivalently due to the fact that there were insignificant complains after replacing butter by margarine. But alternatives explanations exist assuming that the customers do know the difference between butter and margarine and perfectly distinguish them.

To begin with, using margarine instead of butter may slightly change the flavor of the meal but not drasticaly, so the clients do not mind the replacement as they still enjoy the dish like previously did. Plus, most complains in restaurants are against the bad services provided by waiters or waitresses and some unpleasant hygienic conditions. Customers can not usually bear a rude server who keeps ignoring their requirements on purpose or takes wrong notes about their orders and makes them pay for the false order. They can not stand either a surprising extra ingredient on their plate like hair or any unedible substance. Therefore, sutle changes like in this case of study are not upseting enough so as to file a complain.

In addition, it is possible that most of the customers were new ones in that they did not know that the restaurant used butter and now margarine. Thus, they have nothing in mind to compare and to complain about. It is implausible that every client entering the premise is an old customer. For example, there could be many tourists who are new arrivals in the region as U.S. is a very attrative tourist destination. Or there could be more vegetarians in southwetern United States, where the change was introduced, who have become consumers of Happy Pancake House because of the substitution.

To be short, the small percentage of customers against the switch of two similar ingredients does not imply they are ignorant about the distintion of the two. Alternative explanations are plausible such as the two posed above: the change is not bothersome enough to complain and new customers who are consciously fond of it.

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Comments

Sentence: To begin with, using margarine instead of butter may slightly change the flavor of the meal but not drasticaly, so the clients do not mind the replacement as they still enjoy the dish like previously did.
Error: drasticaly Suggestion: drastically

Sentence: They can not stand either a surprising extra ingredient on their plate like hair or any unedible substance.
Error: unedible Suggestion: edible

Sentence: Therefore, sutle changes like in this case of study are not upseting enough so as to file a complain.
Error: sutle Suggestion: subtle
Error: upseting Suggestion: No alternate word

Sentence: For example, there could be many tourists who are new arrivals in the region as U.S. is a very attrative tourist destination.
Error: attrative Suggestion: attractive

Sentence: Or there could be more vegetarians in southwetern United States, where the change was introduced, who have become consumers of Happy Pancake House because of the substitution.
Error: southwetern Suggestion: southwestern

Sentence: To be short, the small percentage of customers against the switch of two similar ingredients does not imply they are ignorant about the distintion of the two.
Error: distintion Suggestion: distinction

argument 1 -- not exactly

argument 2 -- not OK

----------------
Let's analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:

condition 1:
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.

//The time is too short, maybe after a while, it is going to have big impact.

condition 2:
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.

//is it safe to say that only 2 percent of customers who file a complaint means that the majority of customers are satisfied? This is an flawed extrapolation.

conclusion:
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.

//One explanation is that 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. In this case, the business manager's premise is flawed, consequentially renders his argument invalid.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 335 350
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Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.278 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.012 4.6
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No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
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Sentence Length SD: 7.304 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5

Sorry, this essay topic has two versions. For another version, the question is asked differently:

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 examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

We got confused with two different ones. So for this essay topic:
...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 explanations could be like this:

One explanation is that the restaurant may want to save money by replacing butter with margarine.

One explanation is that customers barely file a complaint if they are not satisfied with some products.
Another explanation is that even only 2 percent of customer complains, this doesn't necessarily mean 98 percent of customers are happy. It is likely that 98 percent of customers are ok with margarine while 2 percent of customers dislike it.

One explanation is that 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. In this case, the business manager's premise is flawed, consequentially renders his argument invalid.