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15. Thefollowing memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake Houserestaurants. "Recently,butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurantsthroughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had littleimpact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers havecomplained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy withthe change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customerswho ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead.Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or theyuse the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine."
Thus, to avoid the expenseof purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-savingchange to its restaurants in the southeast and northeastas well. Write aresponse in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that couldrival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) canplausibly account for the facts presented in the argument. The manager of HappyPancake House suggests that butter can be replaced by margarine in northeast.The manager cites a survey showing that only 2 percent customs have complained.He also points out that many servers have reported that a number of customerswho ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine. And heassumes that customs don't distinguish butter from margarine or they use theterm 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. However, the argument containsseveral logical flaws, which render it unconvincing. First of all, the manager assumes that the 98percent of customs who don’t complain will be happy when receive the margarine.However, the manager fails to provide any evidence to support it. Perhaps theyare not as picky as those 2 percent. What’s more, those who don’t complain mayhave many other reasons. Perhaps, they don’t want to make trouble or think it toounworthy to complain. Since the manager has failed to consider thesepossibilities, the manager’s assertion that the change has little impact cannotbe taken seriously. Secondly, the manager counts on the reportby servers that many customs don’t complain. However, the manager fails toindicate the number of servers who reported and the percentage of the wholeserver group they make up. Absent of the information, we can think that only afew people do so, or only the minority report what the manager says and themajority report the opposite. Lacking such information, the manager can't relyon it to draw any firm conclusions. Even though, what the manager has referred toare all countable, we cannot draw the conclusion relying on what has happenedin southwestern. The author hastily assumes that customers in other regionswill respond to the change similarly as southwestern customers. Actually,habits in south and north can be totally different. And the author fails toprovide any information concerning the possible change in the profit of HappyPancake House after the replacement, thus we cannot evaluate the overall effectof the recommendation mentioned above. In conclusion, the argument is not wellsupported. To strengthen it the manager must provide better evidence that customsin northeast reply similarity as those in southeast. And what has been reportedin southeast is persuasive. To better evaluate the argument, I want informationabout how many servers participate in survey, the percentage of each group whohas different answers. |
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