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 different regions. The buildings were erected by two different construction companies — Alpha and Zeta. Even though the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build, and its expenses for maintenance last year were twice those of the building constructed by Alpha. Furthermore, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been higher than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Such data, plus the fact that Alpha has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, indicate that we should use Alpha rather than Zeta for our contemplated new building project."
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.
In the memo of vice president of highly diversified company, the author concludes based on a specific assumptions and facts that the Zeta building project should be used as an example for future new building projects. However, conclusion based on these assumptions, if not substantiated, will dramatically weaken the persuasiveness of the argument.
Firstly, author states that the building cost of the Zeta project was higher than the Alpha one even though they had similar floor plan. Perhaps this cost diffirence could be attributed to the different geophysical and environmental conditions. There is the possibility that the Zeta building was constructed in high-seismical activity region, which in sense will make construction more expensive than if it was purposed to build in a stable region. In order to make building more resistant to the seismic activity more material is needed, and it additionally burdens the budget. As seen from the above passage, the cost difference could be atributed to other essential factors and comparing these buildings on the money scale will significantly reduce persuasiveness of the author’s contention.
Secondly, author presumes that the increasing energy consumption of the Zeta building comparing to the Alpha indicates inefficiency of the office itself. However, this may not be the case. It could be potentially attributed to the fact that the workers in the Zeta headquarter are staying late and actively accomplishing companies quarterly goals. If author would look closer to the KPI of both office employees, he/she could probably see that the two indexes are significantly different, with Zetas being higher than Alphas one. If the above scenarios has the merit, then the authors conclusion is based on the cursory analysis of the situation.
Finaly, author asumes that stable workforce and little rate of turnover are because of the building itself not because of the other factors. Perhaps, this trend in the workforce could be ascribed to the company managers that are working in the Alpha headquartes, or it could be attributed to the regional trend where most of the employers prefer to have little rate of turnover. In that instance, using the Alpha building project as the exemplary for the upcoming construction projects, will contribute little to no effect on the employees turnover rate or the stability of the personnel.
In conclusion, it’s possible that using Alpha’s building as the example for the future constructions ,that the company intends to do, will have advances comparing to the Zeta project. However, as it stands now, the argument relies on three unfounded assumptions that render its conclusion unpersuasive at the best and specious at worst. Thus, the author needs to provide additional evidence on three fronts: whether the geophysical conditions are different in those two regions, the productivity indexes of both headquarters, and whether the Alpha’s employee trend could be ascribed to the building itself.
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Comments
e-rater score report
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: 18 15
No. of Words: 471 350
No. of Characters: 2472 1500
No. of Different Words: 220 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.659 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.248 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.905 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 188 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.732 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.342 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 578, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...above scenarios has the merit, then the authors conclusion is based on the cursory anal...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 430, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...stance, using the Alpha building project as the exemplary for the upcoming constr...
^^
Line 9, column 101, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...the example for the future constructions ,that the company intends to do, will hav...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, however, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2544.0 2260.96107784 113% => OK
No of words: 470.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.41276595745 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65612321451 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98795226863 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.491489361702 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 783.0 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.4592100159 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 141.333333333 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.1111111111 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.11111111111 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.224334574326 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0652769392848 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0535873642998 0.0701772020484 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.125212651382 0.128457276422 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0311713258537 0.0628817314937 50% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.1 14.3799401198 119% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.33 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 131.0 98.500998004 133% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.