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 bicycle-related accidents 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, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
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.
In this passage, the author recommends more education of bicycle safety, discourages bicyclists to wear helmets and predicts that such approach will lead to a decline of number of injuries involved with bicycle accidents. Somehow reasonable though such recommendation appears at first glance, the author's reasoning about this argument is unconvincing due to several unsubstantiated assumptions which, if prove unwarranted, will seriously challenge the author's conclusion.
To start off, the author's reasoning heavily relies on the assumption that all studies mentioned above reflects true coincidence between increasing number of helmet wearing and more severe status of bicycle accidents nowadays. Based on this assumption, the author therefore put forwards his/her further ratiocination. However, such assumption is potentially problematic because responders in studies might not tell the truth for the sake of masking their misdemeanour of forgetting wearing helmet. Nor do we know the today's accidental rate of bicycle out of all accidents, as only the increasing rate compared ten years ago has been represented. If it turns out that responders told lie during the interview, or the proportion of today's bicycle accident is even smaller than ten years ago, the author's overestimation about the severity of bicycle accident status is unconvincing.
Furthermore, by stating that bicyclists take more risks with helmets, the author concludes that bicyclist with wearing helmets should take responsibility of relevant accidents and rules out alternative reasons which could also take charge for the accidents. However, we need to re-examine the assumption that it is bicyclists wearing helmet that mainly trigger the happening of those accidents. It is likely that pedestrian, drivers or other irresponsible people in accidents ignore the traffic rules and contribute to such accidents. It is of equal probability that bicyclists never wear helmet during accidents. If any of these probabilities is true, we are inclined to believe that bicyclists with helmet mainly give rise to the increasing bicycle accidents.
Last but not least, while all of these aforementioned assumptions prove warranted, the author's recommendation is still unnecessary due to the doubtful assumption regarding the efficiency about more education and less helmet wearing. Claiming that those strategy will be effective, the author seems too optimistic. It is unreasonable to assume that people could have a better safety when involving with accidents without wearing helmet. Also, the author hastily comes to a conclusion that education effect could easily surpass protection engendered by helmet, but does not discuss whether pure education could incur sufficient safety sense of bicyclists during the driving. If people will suffer more terrible injure during accident without helmet, or majority of bicyclists disgust boring education and refute to take any education course, the author's idealistic plan would become in vacuum.
In summary, whether we should implement the author's recommendation heavily depends on the validity of these aforementioned assumptions. If these assumptions are invalid, the author's argument would become little more than his/her wishful thinking and therefore we should resort to other solutions to eliminate the number of bicycle accidents.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 498 350
No. of Characters: 2815 1500
No. of Different Words: 241 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.724 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.653 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.966 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 238 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 183 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 129 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 98 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.211 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.377 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.359 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.572 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.175 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 453, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...warranted, will seriously challenge the authors conclusion. To start off, the auth...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 550, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ow the todays accidental rate of bicycle out of all accidents, as only the increa...
^^
Line 5, column 795, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...is even smaller than ten years ago, the authors overestimation about the severity of bi...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 88, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...tioned assumptions prove warranted, the authors recommendation is still unnecessary due...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 248, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this strategy' or 'those strategies'?
Suggestion: this strategy; those strategies
... and less helmet wearing. Claiming that those strategy will be effective, the author seems too...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 642, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...n could incur sufficient safety sense of bicyclists during the driving. If people...
^^
Line 17, column 45, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ummary, whether we should implement the authors recommendation heavily depends on the v...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 175, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
.... If these assumptions are invalid, the authors argument would become little more than ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, regarding, so, still, therefore, while, in summary, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2875.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 496.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.79637096774 5.12650576532 113% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71922212354 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.02992400624 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 250.0 204.123752495 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.504032258065 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 896.4 705.55239521 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.2831943867 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 151.315789474 119.503703932 127% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.1052631579 23.324526521 112% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.42105263158 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 8.0 5.25449101796 152% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.195940790878 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0669818326091 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0512505017183 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105689991129 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.066513787199 0.0628817314937 106% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.9 14.3799401198 131% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 28.17 48.3550499002 58% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 16.66 12.5979740519 132% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.26 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 136.0 98.500998004 138% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 19.0 11.9071856287 160% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.