The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
"Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest control services at our warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years in Palm City, continued to service our warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage. This difference in pest damage is best explained by the negligence of Fly-Away."
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument
The vice-president of food distribution company has put the blame on newly contracted Fly-Away and argued that negligence on their part has caused more destruction of food in their warehouse. A comparative analysis have been put forwarded by the arguer to support his conclusion. However, the study fails to show the link between the fact and the reason and there may be several alternate reasoning that explains the same study results and much more plausible.
To begin with, it has been said that the new contract is being signed only recently. It is likely that the food were destroyed long ago but haven’t been noticed due to lack of alacrity from his own company warehouse stuff. Also , whenever there is a uncontrollable pest existing before, this would take considerable time to control it. Fly-Away haven’t been provided that time as one month is too less to measure their performance. The study should conduct the same study after sufficient time that is enough to control pests.
Secondly, the location of the warehouses may play an important role in coverage of pest attack. It is possible that Wintervale is situated in relatively higher grounds where such kind of pests are rare to occur. On the other hand , if the city warehouse where Fly-Away is appointed is placed at lower altitude where there is a possibility of proliferation of the pest , the pest will spread rapidly compared to the former one. In this case, the choice of location of company warehouse and not the pest control company to be blamed.
Thirdly, the condition of warehouse also needs to be considered before coming to conclusion. The pest control company will only provide their medicine to control pest. But the warehouses also need to be clean and organized to prevent further spread of pest. If the condition of two warehouse are different, then their results cannot be compared together. It is easy to put the blame on contractors to cover up one’s own mistake.
Moreover, the readers are provided with absolute numbers of price of food destruction rather than percentages. It is possible that the former warehouse is much larger when compared to Wintervale warehouse. In that case, even if all other alternate reasons are not applicable to the situation, the new contractor actually performed better than the former one in controlling pests and preserving foods in terms of percentages.
In conclusion, the arguer failed to justify his argument from the results provided. The alternate conclusions that are unaccounted looks much more believable to support the results. The conclusion could have been substantiated if the readers are provided with much more concrete studies like comparative percentages of food destruction, discard confusion arising on account of location and warehouse conditions or sufficient time lapse before providing experimental results. In absence of these, the argument blaming negligence on part of Fly-Away pest control company remains unconvincing to readers.
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Comments
ur introduction was a lil
ur introduction was a lil unclear....
ur arguments were precise nd sound. though d 3rd argument according to me was nt that imp.
conclusion was way too large.....be precise...also the ur conclusion is not neccesaarily more believable than d author's conclusion, itz jus an alternative.....!!!
overall it was very good....ur arguments were perfect.....
Argument 1 -- OK
Argument 2 -- OK
Argument 3 -- OK
Argument 4 -- OK.
Suggested arguments:
1. The damage $20,000 should be compared to that in the past in Palm City. It should not be compared to another location in Wintervale;
2. The situation in Palm City and Wintervale might be quite different.(Your Argument 2 and Argument 3) No evidence to prove that Buzzoff is effective. Maybe it worked well in Wintervale but not in Palm.
3. The vice president does not inform us about the actual price charged by each company, thus we can not evaluate if we can save money by adopting the president’s advice.
4. There may be some difference between the specialty of the two company on pest-control, thus it is too hasty to use Buzzoff for all pest-control services.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 483 350
No. of Characters: 2450 1500
No. of Different Words: 229 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.688 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.072 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.778 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.125 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.079 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.28 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.522 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.04 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5