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.
A homeowner tells his friend to entrust Adams Realty, rather than Fitch Realty, with his real estate business. He recommends the firm for it has more agents, higher sales revenue, and faster rate of selling houses than Fitch Realty. Although these reasons may be enough for his friend to prefer Adams to Fitch, they are based on assumptions that need further scrutiny. Without it, there is a high probability that entrusting Adams Realty may not be an ideal advice for the friend.
The homeowner argues that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty because the firm employed more agents. The underlying assumption here is that the more agents a firm employed, the better the firm is able to handle the home sales. However, the assumption is not always a valid one. It is possible that the 40 real estate agents at Adams Realty are relatively inexperienced and incompetent than the 25 agents at Fitch Realty. If so, the homeowner cannot recommend Adams Realty to his friend based on the number of agents in the firm. Additionally, he did not specify how many of the 40 Adams Realty agents are full-time. It is probable that 39 of those agents are part-time, which is more than the half of agents at Fitch Realty.
The homeowner further argues that Adams Realty is superior because it averaged more revenue last year than Fitch Realty. The average revenue alone cannot be used as an index to determine which firm is superior because the revenue distribution could be largely skewed. For example, Adams Realty has a higher average revenue than Fitch Realty because the firm sold many homes at a low price and one home at a ridiculously high price. In contrast, Fitch Realty could have sold most homes around the average amount indicated in the argument, which, in fact, might be more favorable to his friend.
The homeowner mentions how fast Adams Realty can sell a home as an indicator for its superiority over Fitch Realty. However, in his argument, he assumes that his experience of selling home with Adams Realty still holds up after a decade. The real estate market could have changed. There is no guarantee that Adams Realty would still sell a home faster than Fitch Realty.
In his argument, the homeowner assumes that the superiority of a real estate firm is determined by the number of agents, the average revenue, and the rate of selling home ten years ago. Upon further examination of these unstated assumptions, his friend should not take the homeowner’s recommendation so easily.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 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: 425 350
No. of Characters: 2018 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.54 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.748 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.42 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 83 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 52 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.238 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.871 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.399 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.577 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.145 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 450, Rule ID: A_UNCOUNTABLE[3]
Message: Uncountable nouns are usually not used with an indefinite article. Use simply 'ideal advice'.
Suggestion: ideal advice
...that entrusting Adams Realty may not be an ideal advice for the friend. The homeowner argue...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, so, still, for example, in contrast, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 40.0 55.5748502994 72% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2088.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 425.0 441.139720559 96% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91294117647 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54043259262 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.54410941855 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.418823529412 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 659.7 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 33.0172771374 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 99.4285714286 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2380952381 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.19047619048 5.70786347227 56% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.408426738736 0.218282227539 187% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.153357029904 0.0743258471296 206% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0980863433954 0.0701772020484 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.252623151402 0.128457276422 197% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0733449500954 0.0628817314937 117% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 14.3799401198 82% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.53 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 98.500998004 79% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => 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.