"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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."
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 author concludes Happy Pancake house’s customers clearly do not distinguish between butter and margarine. To support the claim the author points out that the change has had a little impact on their customers and only 2 per cent of customers have complained indicating that 98 out of 100 are happy with the change. The author’s chain of reasoning provides an interesting and novel insight. However the claim is based on certain unwarranted assumptions which are not so obvious. In order to better evaluate the argument and analyse its logical soundness, assumptions and evidences must be examined for possible alternative explanations that could account for the facts stated in the argument.
Firstly, the author hasn’t mentioned how recently the change was implemented in the south-western United States. Was it changed two days ago or one week ago? If the change was implemented one day ago then the customers might have assumed that butter is unavailable for the time being and will be available soon. If the same customers repeat then they might realise that butter has been replaced and might or might not complain about the same depending on their choice. But if they don’t complain then that doesn’t mean they are happy about it or they don’t realise it. Hence, this assumption is unwarranted with lacking substantial evidence about how recently the change was made.
Secondly, any details about the past and current number of customers have not been mentioned by the author to determine 2 percent of how many exact customers have complained. Does the 2 percent customer belong to a specific outlet or to the entire outlets of southern United States? If they belong to a single outlet then 2-3 customers out of those 12-15 must have revisited the store and then realised that it’s again margarine and no butter is available and must have complained about it. Rest of the customers might not revisit the store assuming the first time butter was not available. It is possible that few days after the change the number of customers start declining. In order to consider this as evidence the statistics providing the number of customers (repeated or new) before and after the change should be provided.
Finally, the author states that many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead but no data of the servers has been presented. It is important to know how many servers have reported are they 10 out of 100 or 2 out of 5. Also what specific server calculates the complaints presented by the customers? It is possible that if all customers of happy pancake house are asked to fill out a form in which they are asked if they are happy with the replacement of butter by margarine, most of them might check the option that mentions they are not happy. Therefore before making any conclusion it is important to conduct such a survey that would help support the argument.
The structure and logical reasoning of the argument appears thorough at first glance however further analysis reveal obvious gaps and unwarranted assumptions that render the argument specious. The evidences presented in the argument lead to many possible alternative explanations including but not limited to “the change has been implemented just one or two days ago and will take some time and supporting data of customers before and after the change”. With lack of comprehensive chain of reasoning, the argument as it stands fails to provide a cohesive theory to support its claim.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not really. it was told that 'Recently...'
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly. it may related to size or taste.
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also need to argue:
Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 598 350
No. of Characters: 2900 1500
No. of Different Words: 251 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.945 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.849 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.594 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 210 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 154 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 74 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.92 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.139 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.492 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 404, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...vides an interesting and novel insight. However the claim is based on certain unwarrant...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 836, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...nd after the change should be provided. Finally, the author states that many ser...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 300, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...d are they 10 out of 100 or 2 out of 5. Also what specific server calculates the com...
^^^^
Line 7, column 626, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...ption that mentions they are not happy. Therefore before making any conclusion it is impo...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 27.0 11.1786427146 242% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 28.8173652695 146% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3001.0 2260.96107784 133% => OK
No of words: 594.0 441.139720559 135% => OK
Chars per words: 5.05218855219 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.93681225224 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.72743743527 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 256.0 204.123752495 125% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.430976430976 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 935.1 705.55239521 133% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.3612552164 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.04 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.76 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.72 5.70786347227 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.215678843572 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0602459140093 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0563312406313 0.0701772020484 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121742184176 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0584794992328 0.0628817314937 93% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.31 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 119.0 98.500998004 121% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.