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.
In the memo if vice president of the large, highly diversified company it is mentioned that even though the construction price of Alpha company is lower than that of the Zeta company they should use Zeta company for their completed new building project. This decision is based on the fact that the expenses for maintenance for last year by the building made by Zeta is lower than that of Alpha. Similarly the energy consumption cost is also lower in case of building built by Alpha, before making this decision to award contract it is necessary to evaluate further evidences which are as follows.
The buildings are built in two different regions, therefore it is possible that there is a difference in cost of expenses in these two different regions. For example, it is possible that the cost of maintenance for building constructed by Alpha is more because the cost of expenses such as manpower cost for maintaining the building, cost of tools or expenses for troubleshooting particular issue is more in this region is more than the other region. If this possibility is true then comparing such maintenance expenses will be similar to comparing apples with oranges and hence basing conclusion on such difference in maintenance cost will not be right.
Secondly, the cost of maintenance considered is for the last one year. There is a possibility that due to some problem or increase in the staff in that particular office this cost might have gone high. In order to compare the expenses for both the offices it is necessary to considered the average cost of the number of years for which it is operational because there are high chances that the expenses may go higher than usual in any particular year due to various factors and similarly it may go low due to several other factors.
One more point to consider is that there are chances that the number of employees in the two regional offices is different. Also, there is a possibility that the type of work happening is these two different offices is different. For example the employees in the office constructed by Alpha might need to work extra hours or need to do work that involves extra energy consumption than that of the employees that work in the office constructed by Zeta.
In order to make any comparison it is necessary to bring the two quantities at the same level, hence the construction cost alongwith the overall running cost, maintenance cost, energy consumption cost shall be compared to make any decision for selecting the contractor.
Considering all the above evidences it is clear that it’s not right to make any decision with the current reasoning provided in the memo. In order to make any conclusion it is necessary to have more information regarding the points mentioned above. Therefore it can not be concluded that the contract shall be awarded to Zeta by the reasoning given by the author.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 492 350
No. of Characters: 2352 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.71 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.78 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.703 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.691 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 205, Rule ID: HE_VERB_AGR[8]
Message: The proper name in singular (Zeta) must be used with a third-person verb: 'companies'.
Suggestion: companies
...f the Zeta company they should use Zeta company for their completed new building projec...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 396, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Similarly,
...de by Zeta is lower than that of Alpha. Similarly the energy consumption cost is also low...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 10, column 250, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...n regarding the points mentioned above. Therefore it can not be concluded that the contra...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, hence, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, similarly, so, then, therefore, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 68.0 55.5748502994 122% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2400.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 492.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.87804878049 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70967865282 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7360109344 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.390243902439 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 774.0 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 74.2723030476 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 150.0 119.503703932 126% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.75 23.324526521 132% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.4375 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.24551242246 0.218282227539 112% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0867669265204 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0771763842195 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121088830463 0.128457276422 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0760913604595 0.0628817314937 121% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.9 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.03 48.3550499002 85% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.62 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 18.0 11.9071856287 151% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.