In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. Prunty County should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways, and improving visibility at dangerous intersections. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago.
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.
Citing the evidence that Prunty county irrespective of the speed limit reduction has not experienced any decrease in the accidents rate at the high way, the speaker concludes that they should adopt the same road improvement measures deployed by Butler county. However, the argument relies on series of unproven assumptions, hence remains unconvincing. Reasons as elucidated in the points below.
From the argument, above, it appears Butler county is wealthy state and hence had the money to improve their road construction. On the other hand, the same might not hold true for Prunty. Hence before drawing conclusions, the financial strength of county needs to be verified. If the Prunty county has the finance to embark on such project, chances are that it might reduce the accident rates.
However, since the present condition of the Prunty’s road was not mentioned in the argument, it is not clear yet, if the road condition is bad as to contributes to the accident encountered. But even if we should assume the roads are bad and it is contributing to the accidents encountered, the topography at Butler county might be so different from the topography of Prunty county such that employing the measures deployed in Butler county might be futile. For instance, if the Prunty county high way is a bridge in the middle of an ocean, expanding the width might not be possible.
In addition, there is every tendency that the reduction of the accident rate in Butler county was not as
a result of the deployed measures. It could be the change in the accident rate in the Butler county occurred simply because the drivers decided to develop a positive attitude towards driving. Hence, they now decide to read the signs and drive more carefully. if this is the situation at Butler county, then mere deploying of Butler county road improvement measures used might not be so effective in Prunty county if the drivers are reckless such as eating and driving, making phone calls while driving etc.
Moreover, we cannot purely determine the efficacy of the road improvement measure deployed in Butler has been. The reason being that the argument only stated a percentage of the reduction in number of accidents. The percentage can represent a small or a large number. If for instance, the number of accidents encountered before is 10 and now it’s just 7, its might be a waste of resources deploying such road improvement measures in Prunty’s county because the difference is too small and as such, it is be difficult to ascertain whether those measures really contributed to that small change or the change occurred as a result of coincidence. But if the number of road accidents used to read upto 1000 but now reads 750, although not such an impressive difference, it is more likely to compel Prunty county more to engage in such measures.
In conclusion, the argument provides inadequate evidence for the assumption on which the argument depends. To better the argument the speaker needs to clarify the following 1. The financial capability of Prunty county. 2, The present condition of prunty road. 3, The Prunty county drivers attitude.
Butler county is wealthy state
Butler county is a wealthy state
Sentence: If for instance, the number of accidents encountered before is 10 and now it's just 7, its might be a waste of resources deploying such road improvement measures in Prunty's county because the difference is too small and as such, it is be difficult to ascertain whether those measures really contributed to that small change or the change occurred as a result of coincidence.
Description: A determiner, possessive is not usually followed by a modal auxillary
Suggestion: Refer to its and might
Sentence: But if the number of road accidents used to read upto 1000 but now reads 750, although not such an impressive difference, it is more likely to compel Prunty county more to engage in such measures.
Error: upto Suggestion: up to
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- not OK. In GRE, we always need to consider it as a big amount. We can get the arguments from the Prunty side:
'In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit.'
1. It is only for one year, it may take time for people to realize the speed difference.
2. Maybe other reasons caused the accidents rates not decreased, not speed limit.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 524 350
No. of Characters: 2550 1500
No. of Different Words: 223 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.784 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.866 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.626 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 206 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.783 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.601 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.609 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.321 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.543 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5