The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake Houserestaurants."Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little imp

In the memorandum above the author concludes that either customers of happy pancake do not differentiate between butter and margarine, or the customers call both butter. This judgment is based on a recent substitution of butter with margarine in the southwestern of the United States. Afterward, as there are insignificant numbers of complaints about the change, the author drew the deduction. There are several rival explanations, which without being ruled out make the conclusion untenable.

First, the author takes for granted the recent change is not noticeable as only a tiny percentage of customers complained. The author is highly prone to perpetrate a fallacy of a false cause; not complaining about a thing does not guarantee that people are satisfied with that thing. A plausible explanation is that people are reticent and do not bother themselves with issuing complains. Instead, they will not come any more to Happy Pancake Stores. It is also possible that, as the change has taken place recently, a surge of complaints are on the way and it is too hasty to make any inference. With these scenarios being the case, the memorandum’s conclusion cannot be tenable.

Furthermore, the author tries to support that there are insignificant numbers of complaints saying that many servers reporting that “a number” of customers complained when receiving margarine instead of butter. However, it is likely that the very number is quite significant, and the author has underestimated that. The author’s version of facts about the insignificance of the complaints is tenable only when there is statistical information not the mere saying of “a number of customers”.

Finally, even if the author is right in saying that the complaints are inconsiderable, still this does not necessarily show that people do not understand the different tastes between margarine and butter. It is probable that in Pancake which is served in Happy Pancake stores the condiments dilute the differences between the taste of butter and margarine. In this case, only people do not distinguish the difference which is in the pancake, not in general. It is also a plausible that they like margarine better than the butter and do not make any complain about. Therefore, the author is highly possible to make a flawed extrapolation.

In short, as discussed, in several parts of the memorandum the author sticks to one explanation which is not supported by the evidences. As the alternative explanations can also be true, there is no room to certainly embrace the author’s conclusion that individuals do not know the difference between margarine an butter when tasting them.