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 twenty days with below-average temperatures, and local weather forecasters throughout the region 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. Based on these developments, we predict a large increase in the demand for heating oil. Therefore, 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.
Investment should be made in Consolidated Industries to meet the expected growing need of home heating oil in northeastern United States. At first glance, the author’s evidences seems somewhat convincing, but further reflection reveals some substantial concerns that should be addressed, and thus, not cogent enough to substantiate the argument. At least, this argument suffers from three main logical flaws.
To start with, the author’s assumption that the demand of heating oil is surely to increase in the near future is unwarranted. What is the surety that the residents of Northeastern Uni...
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 374 350
No. of Characters: 1971 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.398 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.27 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.881 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 156 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.319 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.285 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.527 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.08 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5