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 different regions. The buildings were erected by two different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Even though the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build, and its expenses for maintenance last year were twice those of the building constructed by Alpha. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been higher than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Such data, plus the fact that Alpha has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, indicate that we should use Alpha rather than Zeta for our contemplated new building project."
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 vice president concludes that the responsibility of completing the new building project should be given to Alpha instead of Zeta. This conclusion is formulated on the basis of statistics indicating that the building constructed by Zeta has been more demanding in terms of funds required for maintenance than the building constructed by Alpha. However, the argument presented by the vice president fails to be cogent as the claims are riddled with unwarranted assumptions.
Firstly, the argument fails to consider the fact that the buildings were constructed in two different regions. It is possible that the construction costs were higher because of the region in which the Zeta company built its building. Perhaps, that region was uneven, and the materials required to build a strong foundation for the building in that region were costlier, thus increasing the overall cost.
Additionally, one year is a short period of time to make judgements about the abilities of a construction company, that too on the basis of the expenses for maintenance of one of its buildings. The author never mentions the way in which these buildings were used. What if the building constructed by Zeta was being used as a place for storing and operating heavy machinery while the building constructed by Alpha was being used as an office, this could explain the greater maintenance cost as well as the higher energy consumption in Zeta’s building.
Lastly, the author never mentions how the stable workforce and little employee turnover affects the quality of the buildings constructed. It is possible that, due to the nature of the companies, greater employee turnover could be potentially better as it would lead to younger and more skilled workers joining the company. Construction work is laborious work which requires and values strength and fitness more over experience.
Thus, due to several unwarranted assumptions and holes in the argument, the vice president’s conclusion is flawed. We need more data to be able to create a comprehensive conclusion and to enable the vice president to make an informed decision.
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Comments
e-rater score report
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: 14 15
No. of Words: 339 350
No. of Characters: 1737 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.291 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.124 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.867 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 128 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.214 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.213 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.429 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.345 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.621 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.088 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 35, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...t. Additionally, one year is a short period of time to make judgements about the abilities ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 250, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[3]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...ee turnover could be potentially better as it would lead to younger and more skill...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, lastly, thus, well, while, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1786.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 339.0 441.139720559 77% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.26843657817 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.29091512845 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95256512445 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 174.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.513274336283 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 538.2 705.55239521 76% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 53.3810426489 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.571428571 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2142857143 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.71428571429 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.252725310457 0.218282227539 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0878810072943 0.0743258471296 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0686565538489 0.0701772020484 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.135665056906 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.104059502882 0.0628817314937 165% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.83 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 70.83 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.25 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.