The following advice was given to a politician by his political consultant:
It is true that 200 apartment renters protested in the rain about the elimination of rent control regulation. However, there are 20,000 renters in the entire city. 19,800 of them stayed home and did not protest. The group that did not protest is much larger and better represents the opinion of renters throughout the city: that the elimination of rent control is not a problem. You should not let the small protest discourage you.
Describe how well reasoned you find this argument. In the discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the argument\'s conclusion. You may also address possible changes in the argument that would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The political consultant seems to express his personal opinion when he advises the politician that he should not let a small protest discourage him. For this, the consultant uses a number of unsubstantiated facts and unwarranted assumptions to bolster his claim, making his line of reasoning weak and unconvincing.
Firstly, he undermines the efficacy of the protest that happened while it was raining. He uses only the number of protesters who participated in the protest to tout his claim that the protest was small. More often than not, the impact of a protest is from the cause for which it was conducted and from what the reach of the protest was. For example, we hear of a single social activist going on a hunger strike. The impact such agitations create in the minds of people is what that galvanize an insipid nation to take action. In failing to explain to the politician, that the reach of the agitation might be much greater than he anticipated, this argument falls short of being convincing.In an era of net savvy denizens, it only takes a Whats app video for an incident to go viral and create a strong impact on its viewers. Further, since the protest happened while it was raining, it points to the intensity of the protest and can in no way be refuted as a weak protest. Thus, by failing to give evidence as regards the absence of media coverage or the reach of the protest, the consultant makes a weak claim.
Secondly, the consultant makes a rather weak argument when he says that since the 19800 renters stayed at home, they were not part of the protest. And he further goes on to make an unconvincing argument that, since this group stayed away from the protest, they were actually not against the proposed regulation and they, in fact, represent the opinion of the renters throughout the city. We are not given any evidence to validate this claim. This claim assumes that there won't be any future protests if the politician goes ahead with the regulation. By giving us no explanations as to the possibility of future protests this evidence makes an unwarranted conclusion.
We have no information to conclude that the renters who stayed at home were not against the regulation. For all we know, they might take to the roads to protest at the next chance. This claim could have been more logically sounding if the consultant could explain the reasons as to how the number of renters staying at home is commensurate with the number who are not against the regulation. For example, if the politician has appeased them in some way or if he has struck an alternate or more acceptable deal with them and so-on. However, in the absence of any such alternate explanations, this claim also is also unconvincing.
Thus, by basing his arguments on some untenable evidence and using that evidence to give an advice, which is at best a personal view, the argument fails to be persuasive and well-reasoned.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- Need to be straight forward, like:
people didn't come for protest maybe because of the rain.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- duplicated to argument 2.
we may argue like:
maybe people stay at home protesting by other ways like: email, facebook, twitter, messages..
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 509 350
No. of Characters: 2360 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.75 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.637 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.616 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.238 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.052 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.319 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.199 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 47, Rule ID: PERSONAL_OPINION_FRIENDSHIP[1]
Message: Use simply 'opinion'.
Suggestion: opinion
...litical consultant seems to express his personal opinion when he advises the politician that he ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 2, column 688, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: In
...rgument falls short of being convincing.In an era of net savvy denizens, it only t...
^^
Line 2, column 737, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: What's
... of net savvy denizens, it only takes a Whats app video for an incident to go viral a...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, thus, well, while, as regards, as to, for example, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 49.0 28.8173652695 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2412.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 507.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 4.7573964497 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74517233601 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71788287551 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 225.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.443786982249 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 755.1 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 15.0 4.96107784431 302% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.7949328646 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.857142857 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1428571429 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.95238095238 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.152187925737 0.218282227539 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0526247630463 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0332511923591 0.0701772020484 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0843747786171 0.128457276422 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0335757464894 0.0628817314937 53% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.62 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.