The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.
"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
Statement above is contending, reducing mopeds by 50percent leads to reduction in accidents by same. According to me this argument is not true without explaining certain implicit assumption as follows.
Frist, author should confirm that there are strict traffic rules imposed by government. Despite of those rules due to increase in moped, accidents are increasing. Otherwise if accidents are because of lack of traffic rule then this will undermine author’s argument. Suppose there is no traffic lights for anyone then in that case there will be confusion between pedestrians and moped drivers, it will result in accidents. In this case to decrease accident government should tighten traffic rules rather than putting restriction on mopeds.
Second, author should investigate and confirms, major accidents are because of mopeds, not because of pedestrian cursory behavior. If accidents are there because of pedestrians not following traffic rues then author’s prediction will be false.
Third, it should be confirmed that there is no other means of transportation available. If other means of transportation is there then in that case reducing mopeds will not lead to reduce in total number of vehicle. In this case number of accidents will be same after reducing mopeds by 50percent and authors foretelling will prove wrong.
Fourth, as author mentioned one incidence that neigh island of Seaville achieve reduction in accidents by reducing mopeds in town. For authors analogy to be correct it should clearly mention that island of Seaville only reduces moped and nothing else. Suppose they also put restriction on people incoming or they tighten traffic rules, in that case author’s conclusion as well as analogy from statement will prove wrong.
So to sum up, for author’s arguments to be true, all the above assumptions need to be considered.
argument 1 and argument 2 can be put in one argument.
argument 3 -- Not OK. read this: 'will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents', not for accidents by all vehicles.
argument 4 -- OK
flaw:
No. of Words: 291 350
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 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: 291 350
No. of Characters: 1524 1500
No. of Different Words: 143 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.13 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.237 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.691 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 124 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.188 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.201 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.647 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5