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 man

Essay topics:

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.

Submitted by orlando23 on Sat, 03/14/2020 - 11:35

In this passage, the author recommends replicating Butler's experience to reconstruct highway in Prunty city for the sake of changing bad traffic situation. To support his/her claim, the author cites result of current regulation of limiting speed in Prunty. Furthermore, he summarized Butler's road improvement project and praised for its efficacy for diminishing breaching of traffic rules from drivers. Quite reasonable though such recommendation appears at first glance, a closer scrutiny reveals that the conclusion lacks crucial supports and therefore we should consider more evidence to help evaluate such conclusion.

To start off, we need evidence to verify if Prunty's restriction of speed limit enacted since last year really failed. While it is shown that accidents has not been decreased and drivers still exceeded the speed limits, no evidence serves to rule out the probability that such regulation had no effect for benefiting the traffic status of Prunty city. Thus, additional evidence gains great significance to determine whether percentage of accidents have been diminished, or severity of breaching speed limits has been ameliorated than ever before. If new information shows that percentage of accidents happening has been actually increased or the severity of exceeding speed limits is worse than before, it is reasonably safe to claim that new regulation of Prunty actually was in vain and his/her viewpoint will be strengthened. On the contrary, if new evidence reveals the opposite situation, his/her stance will be weakened.

Furthermore, we need more evidence to ascertain whether Bulter Country's improvement project directly lead to the better traffic situation. First of all, while less reported accident statistics is astonishing, more detailed figure about accidents could lend great support to the author's recommendation. If situation of reported accidents are actually much more severe than that of Prunty, the efficacy of Bulter's traffic investment is in great doubt and his/her viewpoint will be rendered much less advisable. Second, we need to know whether such so-called reports covered all accidental cases in Bulter. If it turns out that major accidents have been skipped in order to counterfeit better report status, we are also unconvinced of effectiveness of the aforementioned road improvement project.

Last but not least, despite the presence of all previous evidence, a more accurate evaluation of the author's recommendation requires further information. Specific evidence is needed to decide whether Butler's experience applies to Prunty directly; that is to say, whether both of two cities confronted the similar traffic situation. To be specific, such similarities should include both objective traffic facilities, such as highway, vehicle basis, and human factors, such as citizens quality and their motivation to abide with traffic rules. If all of those are agreeable between two cities, it might be reasonable to convince us in regard to better traffic situation in Prunty after adaption of such approach. On the contrary, if both of those fundamental circumstances are diverged, we are reluctant to believe that blind replication of the aforementioned approach could ultimately work as expected.

In summary, the evidence cited by the author in the argument could not provide sufficiently conclusive information to make his/her viewpoint compelling. As a result, we need more evidence to evaluate such conclusion.

Votes
Average: 8.3 (1 vote)
Essay Categories
GMAT/GRE Argument Task

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 29, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'recommends replicating'.
Suggestion: recommends replicating
In this passage, the author recommends to replicate Butlers experience to reconstruct highw...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 914, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'will' requires the base form of the verb: 'weaken'
Suggestion: weaken
...opposite situation, his/her stance will weakened. Furthermore, we need more evidence ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 279, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...cidents could lend great support to the authors recommendation. If situation of reporte...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 102, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ence, a more accurate evaluation of the authors recommendation requires further informa...
^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, if, really, second, so, still, then, therefore, thus, while, in summary, such as, as a result, first of all, in regard to, on the contrary, that is to say

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 75.0 55.5748502994 135% => OK
Nominalization: 39.0 16.3942115768 238% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2950.0 2260.96107784 130% => OK
No of words: 525.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 5.61904761905 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.78673985869 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9930495449 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 272.0 204.123752495 133% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.518095238095 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 926.1 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.2130404312 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.476190476 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.0 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.28571428571 5.70786347227 163% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.128892001213 0.218282227539 59% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0410614878252 0.0743258471296 55% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0318927565436 0.0701772020484 45% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0677707339441 0.128457276422 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0369948276384 0.0628817314937 59% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.5 14.3799401198 122% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 29.18 48.3550499002 60% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.4 12.197005988 126% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.61 12.5979740519 124% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.84 8.32208582834 118% => OK
difficult_words: 165.0 98.500998004 168% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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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.