The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time. The favored proposal of the motorists' lobby is to widen the highway, adding an additional lane of traffic. But last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green Highway was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it. A better alternative is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway. Many area residents are keen bicyclists. A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase."
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 writer argues that adding a bicycle lane to Blue highway will reduce rush hour traffic. It is based on the premises that residents are enthusiastic about riding a bicycle and highlighted the failure of the widening of a highway to Green Highway, which actually resulted in worsening of traffic. The argument seems true at first sight, however, on deeper analysis it becomes clear that certain relevant aspects have not been taken into account, leading to a number of unverified evidences and logical flaws.
One such unverified evidence is sampling error. In other words the writer has assumed that since additional of a lane to Green Highway was futile effort, thus, it would not be successful, if implemented, for Blue Highway. However, there may be the case that addition of a lane to Green Highway was designed in such a way that it connected all roads leading to the most traveled destination, thus after adding it, all commuters have started to use this new lane and even commuters from other locations started using it since it provided them the shorter route. Or it may also be the case that in order to advertise this new route, authorities opened up road side outlets for selling foods and other items, leading to massive traffic jam. Therefore, in order to overcome this flaw, the writer should have considered evidences identifying the causes for traffic jam on this new lane.
Moreover, the writer has not verified the analogy. In other words, the writer has assumed that the distance between the city and the place where commuters usually travel to is able to be covered by bicycle. However, there may be the case that majority of these residents use this Blue Highway to travel a distance of 25 km to reach to their distance, thus to cover such a large distance commuters would prefer a car or motorcycle. For example, the study, conducted by Automobile Association of India in 2000 covered all 3 major highways, has concluded that distance which is greater than 15 km one way is not preferred by commuters to cover it by walking or riding a bicycle since this was causing them excessive exhaustion and making them weak for the day, thus affecting their work performance. Therefore, to render this argument valid, the writer should demonstrate the preferences of commuters to travel a specific distance.
Finally, the writer has arbitrarily ignored the evidence for cause and effect. In other words, the writer has assumed that only this area residents are using the Blue Highway and since they are keen on riding a bicycle, adding a bicycle land would address their issue. However, there may be the case that majority of commuters who are using this highway are not from this area, but rather use this highway since it connects well to the city centre in terms of short distance. Moreover, it may also be the case that though the residents are interested in cycling, but their interest does not transform into using the bicycle to cover this distance since they use bicycle only for the purpose of exercise but may be unwilling to use cycle while going to office in formal dress. Therefore, to strengthen the argument, the writer would need to prove that only these residents are using the highway and they would use it for going to office as well.
While concluding, after close examination of the argument presented, it is apparent that the argument as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on certain unverified evidences. The recommendations in the above paragraphs show how this argument may be strengthened and made more logically sound to analyse the viability of the proposed measure.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 617 350
No. of Characters: 2955 1500
No. of Different Words: 260 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.984 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.789 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.503 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 203 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 163 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.85 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.83 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.332 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.549 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 55.0 28.8173652695 191% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 81.0 55.5748502994 146% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3039.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 617.0 441.139720559 140% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.92544570502 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.98392262146 4.56307096286 109% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.58732825501 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 268.0 204.123752495 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.434359805511 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 972.0 705.55239521 138% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 30.0 22.8473053892 131% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 82.2231567139 57.8364921388 142% => OK
Chars per sentence: 151.95 119.503703932 127% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.85 23.324526521 132% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.6 5.70786347227 116% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.122617721477 0.218282227539 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0461067223364 0.0743258471296 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0433841553013 0.0701772020484 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0738904222348 0.128457276422 58% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0349454074731 0.0628817314937 56% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.03 48.3550499002 85% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.91 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 132.0 98.500998004 134% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.0 11.1389221557 126% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.