The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The vice president of a large, highly diversified company argues that we should use Zeta instead of Alpha for our contemplated new building project. To buttress his/her argument, the author cites the following evidences: first, Zeta has lower annual maintenance fee; second, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of Alpha building every year; finally, Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover. Though the issue has its own merit, due to lack of persuasive evidences and unstated assumptions, the conclusion in the memo is unsubstantiated.
To begin with, insufficient updated information about the two headquarters prevent us from drawing justified conclusion. The author relies on the outdated information, which is the construction price ten years ago. If Alpha has improved its construction technology over the last decade while Zeta stay the same, then the company would not benefit from contracting with Zeta as his or her expectations. In addition, the author only provides the maintenance fee of last year. How about maintenance fee in other years? If Zeta has higher expense in maintenance in most years except last years, we perhaps can assume that that outlier is not representative of the general trend of maintenance expenditure, thereby weakening the argument from the memo. Without answering current and expected maintenance fee, we cannot make strong comparison. If the construction cost is so that that maintenance cost can be ignored, then the total cost from Zeta probably would exceed Alpha dramatically, thereby weakening the suggestion from the director.
Moreover, the author assumes that energy consumption of the Alpha building has been higher than that of Zeta building every year. The assumption seems valid at first glance, but is problematic after further investigation. What are the employees and number of offices in those two companies? Where are the two headquarters located? It is plausible that Alpha building has more workers in the company, so that it will consume more energy. Furthermore, if Alpha's building in located in areas where winter is frozen and summer is much hotter than Zeta's building, then it requires heating during the cold weather and use air conditioner more frequently during the summer. Without detailed information about these two companies, we are unable to draw any convincing conclusions.
Last but not least, the stable workforce and employee turnover does not necessarily indicate the quality of every construction company. For example, Alpha is featured for its hyper-competitive company culture, so that employees have to work diligently in order to remain in the companies. Those who make relatively low profit and revenue will be fired. It is also likely that Alpha will hire sophisticated experts usually to improve its quality of the company. Hence, even if Alpha has lower employee turnover, its quality is more reliable because of hard-working workers and rigid company rules. Without explaining the reasons or situations behind such comparisons, the conclusion made by the director in unconvincing. The author also fails to give the reasons of forgoing Alpha. Since its bid promises lower construction costs, it makes more sense to accept such bid for seeking higher profit.
To sum up, as it stands, the conclusion in the memo is relied on several questionable assumptions and unanswered questions that curtail the credibility of the argument. To further strengthen the memo, the vice president of this company is recommended to provide the evidences as follows: first, comparison from all respects of these two headquarters and the current maintenance fees; second, whether the only cause of energy consumption is constructed company; third, the importance of workforce stability and employee turnover imply in making a decision.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final 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: 28 15
No. of Words: 603 350
No. of Characters: 3178 1500
No. of Different Words: 284 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.955 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.27 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.891 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 234 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 185 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 127 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 88 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.536 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.673 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.607 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.269 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.456 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1037, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ening the suggestion from the director. Moreover, the author assumes that energy...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, hence, if, moreover, second, so, then, third, while, for example, in addition, to begin with, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3264.0 2260.96107784 144% => OK
No of words: 602.0 441.139720559 136% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.4219269103 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.95335121839 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97595059426 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 306.0 204.123752495 150% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.508305647841 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 1017.0 705.55239521 144% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 10.0 2.70958083832 369% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 75.6955502426 57.8364921388 131% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.571428571 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.10714285714 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.242132502858 0.218282227539 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0633279237918 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0618909392845 0.0701772020484 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136928111812 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0449446374722 0.0628817314937 71% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.16 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.93 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 162.0 98.500998004 164% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.