The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.
"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase—and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."
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 author's argument that construction of new electric generating plants is not needed seems axiomatic. To support the claim, the author cites several recent surveys, newly released products and technologies, and past trend on demand on electricity. However, the author does not provide adequate evidences to effectively bolster his assertion.
To begin with, the author posits that indication of several recent surveys of home owners is reliable. There is no exact data of the date of the surveys and the duration of the surveys, which are crucial in examining relevance of the surveys to current situation. Also, it is not cited if participants of the surveys, home owners, are representative of the entire population. Without information regarding those aspects, the author's citation will remain unreliable.
Moreover, the author supposes that since home owners are willing to conserve energy, they will purchase energy efficient home appliances and take advantage of new technologies to conserve energy. First, even if home owners are eager, they just might try to reduce their energy consumption in other ways such as turning lights off or unplugging unused cords. Also, even if people do purchase those energy efficient appliances, total spent energy could still be greater than before even after the conservation of the energy. If then, those appliances surely reduced the rate of energy consumption, but still did not prevent increase of total amount of energy consumption.
Another assumption that the author of the memorandum makes is that the demand of home owners reflect the total demand. The author neglects the fact that there are other people consuming energy in the area. There are firms and plants that demand energy, and data of those consumption is not considered. Even if total energy consumption of home owners decrease, if energy consumption of other parts of the area overrides the decrease, thus increasing the total demand for electricity, the author's claim will not effectively predict the future situation.
Lastly, the author conjectures that the energy demand for the past twenty years will accurately reflect the energy demand present and future. Nonetheless, situations might have become different. There might be more houses, firms, and plants that demand more electricity which could shift the trend of past twenty years. Without providing information on the changes of the area, the author's claim will remain gratuitous.
All in all, the author's argument is not convincing. To strengthen the claim, the author needs to provide information on recent surveys, the exact evaluation of energy conservation through home appliances, demand of electricity of the entire area, and information of changes in the area that could affect the total amount of energy consumption.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- In GRE/GMAT, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. It is important to find out loopholes behind surveys or studies. Loopholes mean that we accept all surveys told are true, but there are some conditions applied, for example:
'Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy.'
Maybe the surveys are true cross the country or other country/areas, not our area.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 438 350
No. of Characters: 2310 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.575 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.274 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.662 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 185 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.857 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.167 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 5, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
The authors argument that construction of new elect...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 426, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...nformation regarding those aspects, the authors citation will remain unreliable. Mo...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 392, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this energy' or 'those energies'?
Suggestion: this energy; those energies
...cords. Also, even if people do purchase those energy efficient appliances, total spent energ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 266, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this consumption' or 'those consumptions'?
Suggestion: this consumption; those consumptions
... plants that demand energy, and data of those consumption is not considered. Even if total energy...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 17, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... remain gratuitous. All in all, the authors argument is not convincing. To strength...
^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'moreover', 'nonetheless', 'regarding', 'so', 'still', 'then', 'thus', 'such as', 'to begin with']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.285132382892 0.25644967241 111% => OK
Verbs: 0.13849287169 0.15541462614 89% => OK
Adjectives: 0.091649694501 0.0836205057962 110% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0570264765784 0.0520304965353 110% => OK
Pronouns: 0.010183299389 0.0272364105082 37% => OK
Prepositions: 0.122199592668 0.125424944231 97% => OK
Participles: 0.0264765784114 0.0416121511921 64% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.76291555846 2.79052419416 99% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0183299389002 0.026700313972 69% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.105906313646 0.113004496875 94% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0224032586558 0.0255425247493 88% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.010183299389 0.0127820249294 80% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2819.0 2731.13054187 103% => OK
No of words: 438.0 446.07635468 98% => OK
Chars per words: 6.43607305936 6.12365571057 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57476223824 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.438356164384 0.378187486979 116% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.285388127854 0.287650121315 99% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.194063926941 0.208842608468 93% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.146118721461 0.135150697306 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76291555846 2.79052419416 99% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 207.018472906 94% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.442922374429 0.469332199767 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 48.4037263067 52.1807786196 93% => OK
How many sentences: 21.0 20.039408867 105% => OK
Sentence length: 20.8571428571 23.2022227129 90% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.0093041251 57.7814097925 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.238095238 141.986410481 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8571428571 23.2022227129 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.714285714286 0.724660767414 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 3.58251231527 140% => OK
Readability: 49.3959556425 51.9672348444 95% => OK
Elegance: 2.10891089109 1.8405768891 115% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.423883162564 0.441005458295 96% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.1361990892 0.135418324435 101% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.098113441026 0.0829849096947 118% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.596581807914 0.58762219726 102% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.180352808132 0.147661913831 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.185986222062 0.193483328276 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0980431930157 0.0970749176394 101% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.445932927121 0.42659136922 105% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0966493867825 0.0774707102158 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.296527763395 0.312017818177 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0672023692644 0.0698173142475 96% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.33743842365 120% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.87684729064 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.82512315271 104% => OK
Positive topic words: 9.0 6.46551724138 139% => OK
Negative topic words: 5.0 5.36822660099 93% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 18.0 14.657635468 123% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.