The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Such data indicate that we should use Zeta rather than Alpha for our contemplated new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
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.
The author concludes that since the building’s constructed by Zeta is cheaper to maintain, it is worth the additional cost at the moment in which the building is constructed. Therefore, the company should contract only Zeta for its next office constructions. The vice president uses the difference in construction and maintenance costs as evidence to support that conclusion. However, the author makes several major assumptions that need to be addressed before the decision maker, whoever it might be, could accept or reject the argument.
First, the author assumes that the locations in which the regional headquarters were build are similar and that the weather conditions are the same. As a result, the maintenance costs and energy expenditures should be quite similar. Although, imagine if one were built in California and the other in Sweden. There will be clearly two different patterns of energy consumption during the year and two totally different weather conditions. Moreover, the maintenance each building required in the last years needs to be detailed, since it could be a consequence of poor building techniques or simply different tax regimes, for instance.
Furthermore, the memo considers that the usage pattern of both buildings was the same. Accordingly, the energy consumption should equal. However, imagine that one building is at a certain location that provided much more business to the company and had several more workers. It is clear that this building, no matter by who it was constructed, will have a higher energy bill. Additionally, one should consider that the energy cost in both locations might not be the same at all.
Finally, the vice president appears to believe that the regulation issues in both places are not distinct at all. If one location has a stricter regulatory apparat and this imply in more costs to receive the licenses needed in order to have the permit to build, that construction will be obviously more expensive, no matter the quality and engineering techniques applied. Additionally, one should also consider the construction costs imposed by corruption. There can be corruption to get the permits, there could be corruption in the building company, there could be corruption among construction workers. Without doubt these are major issues that need to be considered.
I can concede that what the author has presented is a potentially good idea, but we still do not have enough information and evidence to conclude that this is the best way to go. In fact, the argument, as it stands now, is flawed due its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions that need to be addressed in order to provide evidence to support or reject the critics made above.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 439 350
No. of Characters: 2217 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.577 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.05 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.795 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.905 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.081 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.278 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.5 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.05 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, moreover, so, still, therefore, for instance, in fact, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2297.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 439.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.23234624146 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57737117129 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92120781498 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.489749430524 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 709.2 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => 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: 51.9046745303 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.380952381 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.9047619048 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.28571428571 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.182048317951 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0557587827707 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0532965868778 0.0701772020484 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100401060921 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.066524860346 0.0628817314937 106% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
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: 13.05 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.51 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.