The following appeared in an editorial in a Prunty County newspaper.
"In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County recently lowered its speed limit from 55 miles per hour to 45 on all major county roads. But the 55 mph limit should be restored, because this safety effort has failed. Most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit and the accident rate throughout Prunty County has decreased only slightly. If we want to improve the safety of our roads, we should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths and resurfacing rough roads. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The solution suggested by the newspaper in order to lower road accident rate in Prunty County looks very reasonable at first glance, since Butler County’s strategy incorporates a complex of actions rather than simply lowering the speed limit. However, no advice should be followed blindly without evaluating the current situation and considering possible differences between counties. The newspaper doesn’t provide any quantitative or qualitative arguments supporting the conclusion, which will make it more cogent.
First of all, it’s hard to claim any experiment successful or not, if the expectations hasn’t been properly set. What was the desired accidents rate? Is it possible that the previous accident rate was already very low, so decreasing it was a very hard task? An additional comparison of road accident rates between different counties can provide some insights about the “baseline” accident rate and set the right expectations.
Secondly, it would be useful to compare road situations between Pruny and Butler Counties before trying to apply the same methods. Butler County could have more rough roads and lower lane widths, so their example wouldn’t really be applicable to the current situation in Pruny County. Instead, a qualitative analysis on the main causes of road accidents can show the main directions for improvements - it can be particular parts of the road, which required additional attention, or frequent rains in the county. Later can justify lowering the speed limit in the first place.
Finally, the argument that because most drivers are exceeding the new speed limit, the limit is useless and doesn’t lower the accidents rates is not entirely convincing. The newspaper doesn’t says anything if the average drivers’ speed decreased or remained on the same level. It’s very common, that drivers exceed the speed limit, but usually only by strictly limited value, say 10-15 mph, because otherwise they become subjects to sensible fee. So additional statistics regarding average speed will be helpful here.
Overall, the newspaper should have brought a few additional arguments in order to support it’s suggestions, otherwise the conclusion seems unwarranted.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK. It doesn't matter the previous accident rate is big or small, 'the accident rate throughout Prunty County has decreased only slightly.'
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. We can't use our knowledge for arguments. 'It’s very common, that drivers exceed the speed limit, but usually only by strictly limited value, say 10-15 mph,...'
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read a sample:
http://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-essays/following-appeared-editorial-prun…
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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: 16 15
No. of Words: 343 350
No. of Characters: 1804 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.304 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.259 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.693 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 138 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.438 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.291 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.571 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.066 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'finally', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'look', 'really', 'regarding', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'first of all', 'in the first place']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.252983293556 0.25644967241 99% => OK
Verbs: 0.136038186158 0.15541462614 88% => OK
Adjectives: 0.119331742243 0.0836205057962 143% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0644391408115 0.0520304965353 124% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0238663484487 0.0272364105082 88% => OK
Prepositions: 0.0763723150358 0.125424944231 61% => OK
Participles: 0.0381861575179 0.0416121511921 92% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.99811550526 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0167064439141 0.026700313972 63% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.090692124105 0.113004496875 80% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0238663484487 0.0255425247493 93% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00954653937947 0.0127820249294 75% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2252.0 2731.13054187 82% => OK
No of words: 339.0 446.07635468 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.64306784661 6.12365571057 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.29091512845 4.57801047555 94% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.445427728614 0.378187486979 118% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.374631268437 0.287650121315 130% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.274336283186 0.208842608468 131% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.182890855457 0.135150697306 135% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99811550526 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 207.018472906 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.589970501475 0.469332199767 126% => OK
Word variations: 67.1941764648 52.1807786196 129% => OK
How many sentences: 16.0 20.039408867 80% => OK
Sentence length: 21.1875 23.2022227129 91% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.2482358584 57.7814097925 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.75 141.986410481 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1875 23.2022227129 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.8125 0.724660767414 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 58.6506268437 51.9672348444 113% => OK
Elegance: 1.63829787234 1.8405768891 89% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.336482463995 0.441005458295 76% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.116538147779 0.135418324435 86% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0761794842612 0.0829849096947 92% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.571556554055 0.58762219726 97% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.166600074337 0.147661913831 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.131370854471 0.193483328276 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0753013650421 0.0970749176394 78% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.304929107298 0.42659136922 71% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0377695160811 0.0774707102158 49% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.216450710184 0.312017818177 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0662628807716 0.0698173142475 95% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.33743842365 60% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.87684729064 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.82512315271 62% => OK
Positive topic words: 3.0 6.46551724138 46% => OK
Negative topic words: 7.0 5.36822660099 130% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 12.0 14.657635468 82% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.