The following appeared in a health newsletter."A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that numbe

Essay topics:

The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety."

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 author of the statement above knows it is necessary to lunch an education program to make bicyclists aware of threats when they put on a helmet, to decrease bicycle-related accidents. This conclusion is based on the assumption that when bicyclists wear helmets, they get lulled into the false safety that no danger will threat them. To further support this argument, the author refers the conformable statistics between the growth of helmet wearing bicyclists and the seemingly parallel growth of the bicycle related accidents during a 10-year nationwide study. As the argument lacks sufficient evidence, the only way of evaluation this argument is when the author provides sufficient evidences.

First, the author needs to provide a firm evidence on whether the study is reliable or not. As it is quoted in the newspaper, the national study is made of by the“reports of the bicyclists”. This highly makes the survey unreliable because the information might be distorted and the report may not be based on the real facts. Furthermore, they might use the helmet occasionally. In a warm weather they might put the helmets aside as it makes inconveniences in riding in the hot weather, and then put it on when the weather gets cold. The source of information should be, for instance, the police reports of how many bicyclists wear the helmets or not, not the bicyclist themselves.

Secondly, assuming that survey source is valid, it is highly possible that the majority of the accidents involve the 30 percent of the bicyclists who do not wear the helmets not the others. Although the increased percentage of the bicyclists using helmets is nearly conformable with the increased instances of accidents_ both get doubled, this alone cannot make any correlation. We need direct evidences showing that the number of accidents of bicyclists with helmets is significantly greater than accident rates of the bicyclist who still do not wear helmets.

Thirdly, there should be evidences attesting that the education classes would sufficiently augment the riding culture of the bicyclist. After taking of the education classes, the attendants might not observe the rules unless the rules are imposed on them legally. The author needs to bring an evidence into the argument, compelling the reader that the education classes would significantly work for the bicyclists.

Finally, even the whole evidences direct us to give credence to the authors’ conclusion, still the last evidence is needed that shows it is the lack of observing safety rules of bicyclists which such accidents happens. It is highly possible that the car drivers are not observing the driving rules and causing such accidents. Moreover, the passerby people might cross the roads where they should not. In these cases, no matter how much the bicyclists observe the rules, accidents can happen.

In short, as discussed, the argument in its current shape has equivalent conditions defying any firm interpretation of the conclusion. Only after providing pertaining four evidences by the author, the argument can be evaluated correctly.

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Average: 4 (1 vote)
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Comments

argument 1 -- for 'study' or 'survey', never cast doubt on 'whether the study is reliable or not'. This is not the loophole. The correct way is: yes, the survey is valid, but it is only valid for:

1. a special time. like: it works only two years ago
2. or a special location. like: it only works for the city A
3. or specific people. like: it only works for middle class
4. or a special event. like: it only works for a program or a project
5. more...

for example, for this survey, you can cast doubt on the percentage:

'The details are expressed in the form of percentages rather than numbers to make them look convincing. For instance, 35 percent could mean 3.5 of 10 or 3500 out of 10000. Thus, in the absence of numbers and the information about the credibility of the study, the assumption is seriously weakened.'

argument 2 -- not clear

argument 3 -- need to argue here:
launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety.

need to cast doubt on what are those 'factors'? why they are more important than helmet use?

argument 4 -- it is OK. But if you have 4 arguments in one essay, mostly likely you are not logically clear about what you are arguing about or you have duplicate arguments. If you analyze the structure of essay topics, you will figure out that most of them only have 3 arguments. and actually it is a hard job to put 4 arguments in real exam in 30 minutes.

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 496 350
No. of Characters: 2540 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.719 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.121 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.746 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 77 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.545 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.272 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.304 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.564 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5