The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, 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 do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
The author argues here that replacing butter with margarine in the restaurants throughout the Southwestern United States have had little impact on the customers. Stated in this way, the argument distorts the view of the situation by manipulating facts and by providing weak evidences. To support this conclusion, the author notes that there has been little complaint by the customers. However, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little credible support for the author’s claim. Hence the argument can be considered incomplete or unsubstantiated.
First of all, the argument readily assumes that 2 percent of customers complaining indicate that the other 98 percent of the people are happy with the change. This is merely an assumption made without much solid ground. For example, the other 98 percent of the customers do not like margarine and are not happy but they simply do not like complaining. Instead of making a complaint, they may decide never to come back to the restaurant. Hence the authors explanation about the complaint would have been more convincing if it explicitly cited a carefully designed customer survey asking about their opinions about the change.
The author also points out that customers who asked for butter do not complain when given margarine instead, thus they must not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term ‘butter’ to refer to either butter or margarine. This again is a distorted view of the situation with unwarranted assumption. To illustrate, the customers may not complain again when given margarine instead because they simply do not like complaining. Or the customers when given margarine, they may be too annoyed to even bother asking again for butter which they explicitly asked for in the first place. If the argument had provided evidence that people cannot differentiate between butter and margarine, the memorandum would have left no room for alternative explanations.
Finally, the author’s claim relies on the analysis that not many people complain about the change. However, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little credible support for the author’s conclusion in several critical respects, and raises several skeptical questions. For example, were there any other factors that changed in the restaurant at the same time? Did overall quality of the service or the taste of the food improve, which could have balanced out customer’s dissatisfaction relating to margarine? Was there any decrease in customers since the change? Without convincing answers to these questions, the reader is left with the impression that the claims made by the author are more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence, which leaves room for alternate explanations.
In conclusion, the author’s memo is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it further, the author must provide clear evidence, perhaps by way of a reliable survey of customer satisfaction regarding the change from butter to margarine. Until substantiated information is provided, alternate explanations to the situation are apparent and even so more plausible.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-09-20 | Krishna Prasad | 46 | view |
| 2019-09-10 | orlando23 | 59 | view |
| 2019-07-30 | Amin Beheshti | 72 | view |
| 2019-03-09 | adhgna@gmail.com | 77 | view |
| 2018-11-24 | julls.kl | 72 | view |
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 506, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...le support for the author's claim. Hence the argument can be considered incomple...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 393, Rule ID: ADVERB_WORD_ORDER[9]
Message: The adverb 'never' is usually put before the verb 'decide'.
Suggestion: never decide
...Instead of making a complaint, they may decide never to come back to the restaurant. Hence t...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 438, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...e never to come back to the restaurant. Hence the authors explanation about the compl...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 448, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... come back to the restaurant. Hence the authors explanation about the complaint would h...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 366, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...re apparent and even so more plausible.
^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'finally', 'first', 'hence', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'regarding', 'so', 'thus', 'even so', 'for example', 'in conclusion', 'first of all', 'in the first place']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.243339253996 0.25644967241 95% => OK
Verbs: 0.147424511545 0.15541462614 95% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0763765541741 0.0836205057962 91% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0728241563055 0.0520304965353 140% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0230905861456 0.0272364105082 85% => OK
Prepositions: 0.127886323268 0.125424944231 102% => OK
Participles: 0.0479573712256 0.0416121511921 115% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.0222715042 2.79052419416 108% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0213143872114 0.026700313972 80% => OK
Particles: 0.00355239786856 0.001811407834 196% => OK
Determiners: 0.113676731794 0.113004496875 101% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0177619893428 0.0255425247493 70% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0142095914742 0.0127820249294 111% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3180.0 2731.13054187 116% => OK
No of words: 491.0 446.07635468 110% => OK
Chars per words: 6.47657841141 6.12365571057 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70728369723 4.57801047555 103% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.421588594705 0.378187486979 111% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.327902240326 0.287650121315 114% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.250509164969 0.208842608468 120% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.171079429735 0.135150697306 127% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0222715042 2.79052419416 108% => OK
Unique words: 235.0 207.018472906 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.478615071283 0.469332199767 102% => OK
Word variations: 55.1477954509 52.1807786196 106% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 20.4583333333 23.2022227129 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.2130456199 57.7814097925 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.5 141.986410481 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.4583333333 23.2022227129 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.666666666667 0.724660767414 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 3.58251231527 140% => OK
Readability: 53.2485573659 51.9672348444 102% => OK
Elegance: 1.72262773723 1.8405768891 94% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.390503576602 0.441005458295 89% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.0829883816798 0.135418324435 61% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0743065977992 0.0829849096947 90% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.548755795115 0.58762219726 93% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.149789516217 0.147661913831 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.156221595064 0.193483328276 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0685177187154 0.0970749176394 71% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.429960182161 0.42659136922 101% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0206138600729 0.0774707102158 27% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.271233338418 0.312017818177 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0686430510544 0.0698173142475 98% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.33743842365 132% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.87684729064 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.82512315271 83% => OK
Positive topic words: 11.0 6.46551724138 170% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.82389162562 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 17.0 14.657635468 116% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.