The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter and to increase profitability, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well."
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 manager provides a seemingly logical argument regarding the change of butter with margarine at the Happy Pancake House southwestern restaurants. Indeed, the survey indicates only few people, 2 percent from customers, have given a complaint to the manager. However, the manager concludes a strange correlation between this survey with profitability. The argument is based on the switch from butter to margarine, yet the manager does not specify anything about the price as a factor in this change at first. In addition, the survey itself is questionable upon a close examination. Many more evidences are needed by the manager before concluding the situation and making a relationship between the margarine and the cost-saving decision.
The most obvious flaw of the manager’s argument is no prices are mentioned in the memorandum given by the manager. From the last statement, the main purpose of the change is supposedly cost-saving, yet we do not know yet what are the prices of margarines and butters respectively. Cooking with butters or margarines is different in the methods and the usage of the butters or the margarines. Any differenc in cooking style creates different requirement of the weight needed for each single cooking. Perhaps, cooking with margarines takes longer in heating up and preparing the pan before taking the raw ingredients into the pan, and this extra time necessitates more addition of margarines. If the price of margarines is higher, then the overall cost will increase. Instead of saving money, the restaurants will face more cost when they choose margarines over butters in all restaurants in other areas of the nation. Although the price of the margarines is cheaper, as we assume, compared to the butters, if the consumption per dish is much higher for margarines then the total cost will be the same or still higher than before. The manager must collect the prices data and the consumption rate of both the butters and the margarines before making assumption for a cost-saving effort.
Moving forward from the most conspicuous flaw, the manager should also evaluate the survey as it is not adequate enough for the company to make a generalization over the consumers’ satisfaction with the change. The question is what is the opinion of the other 98% of customers that do not submit any formal complaint to the company. Probably, 2% of the customers might be the bravest ones to give formal complaint to the company, and the other 98% might want to disagree but they are too lazy to do so. The impact of dissatisfaction is the overall customers base will decrease in size and the income of the company will drop dramatically. The manager must also ask the person who takes the survey about the total number of the customers indicated by the survey. The number could only account all customers within a single month which has a really low number of the customers in total. This uncertainty must end, and the manager must deliver another survey that is detailed and more representative of the overall customers in any given time. The notion of people can not distinguish butters from margarine also underestimates the ability of their customers, so it must be included into the survey; the company must clearly state the difference between the two, the strength and the weakness of these two type of ingredients, and let the customer decides which one is the best for them if the company wants to achieve the best satisfaction for the customers.
The technical issue of the cooking should be carefully considered by the company. In this growingly competitive era, it will be hard for any restaurant to compete because there are so many restaurants with their own characteristics, strength, and type of cuisine. It will be wiser for the company to decide the usage of butters or margarines based on the needs of the dishes. Some dishes may require butters and some others may not to make the best taste for the customers. If this restaurant wants to be successful, then they need to make sure the need of usage of butters and margarines. All these must be investigated further for the manager before making the right strategy.
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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: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 696 350
No. of Characters: 3404 1500
No. of Different Words: 285 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.136 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.891 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.745 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 250 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 184 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 90 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.932 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.483 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.301 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.464 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1159, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'prices'' or 'prex's', 'price's'?
Suggestion: prices'; prex's; price's
...an before. The manager must collect the prices data and the consumption rate of both t...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 763, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... the customers indicated by the survey. The number could only account all customers...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, really, regarding, so, still, then, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 24.0 12.9520958084 185% => OK
Conjunction : 25.0 11.1786427146 224% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 94.0 55.5748502994 169% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3482.0 2260.96107784 154% => OK
No of words: 696.0 441.139720559 158% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.00287356322 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.13632280105 4.56307096286 113% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84155157942 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 302.0 204.123752495 148% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.433908045977 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1110.6 705.55239521 157% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 18.0 8.76447105788 205% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.7476259146 57.8364921388 110% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.068965517 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.86206896552 5.70786347227 50% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.202942329814 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.054379914152 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0507517029288 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.126237680487 0.128457276422 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0502841787906 0.0628817314937 80% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.16 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 147.0 98.500998004 149% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.