The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town — Adams Realty and Fitch Realty — Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
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.
The homeowner in his letter to a friend concludes that if he wishes to sell his home quickly and at a good price, he should stay with Adams Realty. He provides support for this conclusion showing some evidences like Fitch Realty took more than four months to sell his house and Adam Realty took only a month to sell his house in last year, Adams Realty has more real estate agents than Fitch Realty and they got a lot more revenue than Fitch Realty. However, the argument is seriously flawed as it is based on some assumptions which are unwarranted. Three of them are stated below.
First of all, the author of the letter assumes that for a real estate firm, the number of employees plays an important role in determining which farm is superior to others. However, this may not be the case. Farm with greater number of employees can face some serious issues like internal conflicts and partisanship between the employees. They may have conflicts with other very frequently and this will provide a very deleterious effect in the performance of the farm. If this is the case, then the argument on which the conclusion is based is seriously flawed.
Secondly, it is important to determine whether Adams Realty will continue to earn profits in the upcoming years like the previous year. The author prematurely assumes that Adams Realty will continue to earn profit in the previous year’s trend. However, this may not occur in reality. Perhaps, Adams Realty can incur a huge amount of loss in the next year, after the year in which the letter was written. If this comes out to be true, then the argument will not hold water.
Last, but not least, it is very important to determine whether Fitch Realty takes a long time to sell houses, very similar to the case it took ten years ago. The homeowner assumes that Fitch Realty will take almost the same long time today. In reality, this may not be the case. It is very possible that Fitch Realty is taking a very short time to sell a house, may be within three weeks. The argument fails to acknowledge this possibility and so the argument is seriously weakened.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is seriously flawed as it is based on some unwarranted assumptions like the stated three cases above. If the homeowner can provide enough evidences for the stated three cases, then the conclusion can be evaluated otherwise it will remain seriously flawed.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 21 15
No. of Words: 421 350
No. of Characters: 1937 1500
No. of Different Words: 178 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.53 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.601 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.349 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 79 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.048 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.693 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1999.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 421.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 4.74821852732 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52971130743 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.41996713562 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 184.0 204.123752495 90% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.437054631829 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 613.8 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.2994629306 57.8364921388 103% => OK
Chars per sentence: 95.1904761905 119.503703932 80% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0476190476 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.04761904762 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.23527943299 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0598382999771 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0786299716835 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.122621422311 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0909026237653 0.0628817314937 145% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.0 14.3799401198 76% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.27 12.5979740519 82% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.48 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => 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.