[72] The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest control services at our fast-food warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years, continued to service our warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage. Even though the price charged by Fly-Away is considerably lower, our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services.
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 this argument, the arguer concludes that the best way of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all their pest control services. To support the conclusion, the arguer points out that their warehouse in Wintervale, served by Buzzoff, only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage, which is less than the warehouse in Palm City, served by Fly-Away. However, this argument suffers from several critical fallacies.
The author claims that $20,000 worth of food stored in Palm City had been destroyed by pest damage, which is higher than $10,000. It seems reasonable to choose Buzzoff in the future, after all, the food served by them lost less money. However, more evidences are required to support the statement. One factor the passage left out is the food stored in two warehouse might be different, resulting in distinct risk of being destroyed by pest damage. For instance, fruit is significantly more likely to attract pest comparing to grains. It is essential to know the cargo stored in the two warehouses in order to evaluate the situation better, then coming up with a better solution.
Furthermore, even though the food stored in two warehouses are the same, another factor we still need to consider is the location of two warehouses. For example, if one is in the forest, where exists more bugs. It is more likely to encounter pest damage comparing to another warehouse located in a cooler area, where bugs are fewer. In other words, unless the author can provide more detail about the location of two warehouses, we cannot make a quick conclusion to return back to Buzzoff.
Next, the author only mentioned that real amount of the worth damaged by the pest. A number of the percentage of the worth of food damaged to the total food stored is required. Because the food stored in Palm city could be much more than the food stored in Wintervale, $20,000 is just a small percent of total food. Then it is not appropriate to consider Buzzoff Company is worse than Fly-Away Company. Therefore, a further investigation of the total food stored in the warehouses is required to realize the percentage of the worth of food damaged by the pest damage.
In the end, according to the previous statement, more evidence is required before the Vice President makes a more comprehensive decision.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 397 350
No. of Characters: 1877 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.464 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.728 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.468 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.895 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.9 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.526 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.552 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.101 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, however, if, may, moreover, so, still, then, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 15.0 55.5748502994 27% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1472.0 2260.96107784 65% => OK
No of words: 285.0 441.139720559 65% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.1649122807 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.10876417139 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80924473047 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 140.0 204.123752495 69% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.491228070175 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 457.2 705.55239521 65% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 36.4475879403 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.1333333333 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.0 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.73333333333 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.153080057451 0.218282227539 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0602754107645 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0684030742153 0.0701772020484 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0976805306285 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0585897277634 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.63 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 55.0 98.500998004 56% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.