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 numerous assumptions that the homeowner makes should give the reader pause. While Adams Realty may be the superior of the two firms in speed and pricing in reality, this letter does not protect from certain fallacies which would falsify the homeowner's argument.
Firstly, the homeowner makes a glaring assumption that the turnover rate for a house on the market ten years ago is the same as today. The owner should have sold a house with each Adams and Fitch ten years ago and today to get a valid comparison of timeliness in selling his/her houses. A similar assumption made is that comparing revenues of the firms for one year is a decent enough representation of superiority; Fitch could have just had a bad year. This assumption goes hand-in-hand with that above to weaken the argument that Adams is superior. It would be no surprise that Adams sold a house quickly during its good year.
Second, the author makes a few unstated assumptions that the higher a firm's number of full-time employees and revenue, the better. This assumption overlooks many possible drawbacks of these supposedly meritorious variables: the higher revenue could be illegal and one would not want to use Adams this year because they will soon shutdown due to venality. Full-time employees are generally overworked and underpaid (with less revenue to go around for their salaries), and thus deliver a worse customer service experience and a worse performance in selling houses. Also, Adams and Fitch may simply deal in selling different types and price-points of homes. If the reader is trying to sell a home in the lower margins of town, they may have a better chance selling quickly by using Fitch.
The holes from the assumptions in this argument should be filled in before the reader trusts that Adams is the superior firm for their house by the measures of speed and price. Market speed was measured too long ago to be a reliable comparison for today's standards, and Adams pricing may not be adequate for the needs of the reader's unique home. Therefore, the homeowner's advice may very well miss the mark for his/her friend's situation.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2020-01-16 | stevewang1007 | 79 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
The arguments are not well organized. Need to argue one by one. Let's analyze the structure of the statement:
condition 1:
Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. //argument 1 here
condition 2:
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. //argument 2 here
condition 3:
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. //argument 3 here
conclusion:
Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty. //argument 4 here
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1736 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.809 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.531 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 117 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 84 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 38 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.067 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.532 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 247, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'homeowners'' or 'homeowner's'?
Suggestion: homeowners'; homeowner's
...rtain fallacies which would falsify the homeowners argument. Firstly, the homeowner ma...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 362, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'homeowners'' or 'homeowner's'?
Suggestion: homeowners'; homeowner's
...the readers unique home. Therefore, the homeowners advice may very well miss the mark for ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, if, look, may, second, so, therefore, thus, well, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1770.0 2260.96107784 78% => OK
No of words: 359.0 441.139720559 81% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.93036211699 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35284910392 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57542847641 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 188.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.523676880223 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 543.6 705.55239521 77% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => 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: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.2251650694 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.0 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.9333333333 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.6 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => 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: 0.177477351734 0.218282227539 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0655466545046 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0524978007582 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.122674107317 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0455261208143 0.0628817314937 72% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => 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: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
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?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.