The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava."The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students en

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The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava.
"The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students enrolled in our public schools will soon decrease dramatically, and we can safely reduce the funds budgeted for education during the next decade. At the same time, we can reduce funding for athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to 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 author's conclusion that there would be sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used by adults is based on ambiguous data and flawed assumption. In order to properly evaluate the argument additional evidences are needed. The evidences could either weaken or strengthen the claim but more importantly it can help reach a credible conclusion.

Firstly the author mentions that the last year's birthrate was half of that of five years ago. However he doesn't provide a precise figure. Maybe five years ago only 50 infants were born and now 25 are born. This is not an dramat...

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Comments

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 31 15
No. of Words: 481 350
No. of Characters: 2467 1500
No. of Different Words: 216 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.683 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.129 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.703 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15.516 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.94 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.548 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.274 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.438 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.062 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5