When Stanley Park first opened, it was the largest, most heavily used public park in town. It is still the largest park, but it is no longer heavily used. Video cameras mounted in the park's parking lots last month revealed the park's drop in popularity: the recordings showed an average of only 50 cars per day. In contrast, tiny Carlton Park in the heart of the business district is visited by more than 150 people on a typical weekday. An obvious difference is that Carlton Park, unlike Stanley Park, provides ample seating. Thus, if Stanley Park is ever to be as popular with our citizens as Carlton Park, the town will obviously need to provide more benches, thereby converting some of the unused open areas into spaces suitable for socializing.
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.
The prompt speaks about Stanley Park's attendance - once the largest, most used public park in town - which has drastically fallen. A number of assertions were used by the author in coming up with a solution to bring the park back to it's former glory. While these assumptions may hold true, they are too presumptive and fail to provide any concrete evidence that would persuade any executive to make an educated decision.
To begin, the writer calls Stanley Park the "largest, most heavily used public park" in town. This statement needs to be further analyzed before claiming such a title: is the park largest by square footage? In parking space? What metrics are used to describe usage? For instance, the park may have an abundance of football fields. These fields would create the largest park by actual surface area, but creates a public area parochial in practical uses. Only football players would find the park useful. Further, usage may be high during football season when teams gather to play competitively, but low during the winter when conditions are too harsh to play outside. Stanley Park may have formally been the largest, most heavily used park, but before any decisions can be made in order to fix it's current attendance problems, the claim needs to be dissected on a granular level.
Furthermore, when referencing the drop in popularity the prompt cites video recordings examing parking lot use from last month. One month does not offer an adequate time horizon when examing the efficacy of a public park. Using the previous example, if last month falls within the heart of winter, the weather may be too cold to expect a large turnout in an outdoor park. The statement goes on to compare the park to Carlton Park which is visited by more than 150 people on any given weekday. Contrasting cars to people is like comparing apples to oranges. It does not provide any useful insight. To illustrate, a Wall Street Journal article was published last month. The article surveyed drivers and concluded that the average car has 2.9 passengers riding in it. If Stanley Park averaged 50 cars per day with roughly 3 passengers in each car, this statistic is materially similar to the attendance seen at Carlton Park. The prompt fails to make a cogent argument by using poor statistical inferences in illustrating the differences between the two parks.
Additionally, the author goes on to make the assumption that adding more seating will, in turn, increase the popularity of Stanley Park simply because Carlton Park has more seating. This is a fallacious presumption. Because seating may have worked for one park does not necessarily constitute success for the other. Carlton Park is near the business district; it is likely that many employees eat their lunches in the park during their lunch break. Stanley Park may not be near any businesses so additional seating may not fare well for them. Also, it is likely that Carlton Park gets support from these local businesses in order to keep the park clean and safe. Perhaps Stanley Park lacks sufficient funding, and, as a result, the park has become dilapidated. We simply do not know. Without adequate information, the author's argument falls short.
In summary, the writer of this prompt makes assumptions that lack factual evidence. While they may be true, they lack the descriptive explanations needed to make insightful business decisions on whether to increase benches in Stanley Park. It would be irrational to base such a decision on the information given.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 186, Rule ID: THE_SUPERLATIVE[2]
Message: A determiner is probably missing here: 'park the largest'.
Suggestion: park the largest
...ed before claiming such a title: is the park largest by square footage? In parking space? Wh...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 819, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...know. Without adequate information, the authors argument falls short. In summary, t...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, if, may, so, well, while, for instance, in summary, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2954.0 2260.96107784 131% => OK
No of words: 588.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 5.02380952381 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9242980521 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60500038459 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 308.0 204.123752495 151% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.52380952381 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 905.4 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Interrogative: 2.0 0.471057884232 425% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 34.0 19.7664670659 172% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.9524533115 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 86.8823529412 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.2941176471 23.324526521 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.55882352941 5.70786347227 45% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 14.0 4.67664670659 299% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.507605829639 0.218282227539 233% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.139526321054 0.0743258471296 188% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.13239972475 0.0701772020484 189% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.284596551079 0.128457276422 222% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.121706736248 0.0628817314937 194% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.9 14.3799401198 76% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 62.68 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.54 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 147.0 98.500998004 149% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.