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 author of the letter recommends his or her friend to choose Adams Realty to sell the home, citing the number of agents, average price of homes sold and the author\'s own experience. At first glance, the argument seems to be plausible; however, a closer review sheds light on a plethora of assumptions. The validation of these understated assumptions can definitely undermine the argument.
To begin with, the author avers that Adams has 40 real estate agents, whereas Fitch only has 25 part-time agents. By adducing these figures the author assumes that the more agents, the better the service. It is not clear, nonetheless, how these agents serve their customers. For instance, it is possible that agents from Adams deal with several homeowners at the same time, while those from Fitch only serve one customer at a time. If this were the case, although Fitch has fewer agents, they can offer better service compared to Adam.
What is more, another point that need to be viewed with caution is that Adam\'s revenue and average price of home sold are both higher than Fitch\'s. This is questionable because the revenue of a whole company has little relationship with the price of a single house. Arguably, maybe Fitch is better at promoting and saling a certain type of house, which fits well with the author\'s friends, making it a better choice than Adams.
Last but not least, by comparing the time spent to sell a house ten years and one year ago, the author makes a bold assumption that other factors influencing the sales of houses has not changed in years, which is obviously ungrounded. A growing population, the lack of newly-constructed houses, the economic boom in the local area can all be the factors that raise the demand of houses, thus homes can be sold faster. Without investigating these factors and many others alike, the author\'s experience is simply incomparable.
In conclusion, while it may be true that the author\'s friend ought to find a real estate firm that offers good service and is efficient to sell the home, but the recommendation proffered by the author are rife with unanswered or even flawed assumptions. The figures and evidence in the letter might be real, but they simply do not substantiate author\'s arguments. Therefore, the argument should not be considered as valid and reliable until the relevant issues are evaluated.
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| 2020-01-17 | sapana | 70 | view |
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, nonetheless, so, therefore, thus, well, whereas, while, for instance, in conclusion, to begin with, what is more
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1977.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 398.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.96733668342 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46653527281 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65645389652 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.55527638191 0.468620217663 118% => OK
syllable_count: 612.0 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Interrogative: 2.0 0.471057884232 425% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.9646241637 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.294117647 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4117647059 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.35294117647 5.70786347227 146% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.199364777258 0.218282227539 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0609562179233 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0759412539311 0.0701772020484 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101649155911 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0781933055161 0.0628817314937 124% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.51 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.