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 the health newsletter, the author argues that the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets. The argument builds around two ten-year nationwide studies that indicate an increased proportion of bicyclists wearing helmets yet also an increase in bicycle-related accidents. However, several groundless assumptions are made throughout the argument and we need to carefully evaluate these assumptions to assess the robustness of the argument.
The first assumption the argument makes is that the two studies cited in the newsletter are both reliable and identical in background and scale. However, this might not be the case. For example, collecting reports about cyclist behaviors and acquiring data about helmet usage might be more difficult ten years ago than it is now, so the data ten years ago might be biased. Conversely, if cameras and traffic polices are more prevalent nowadays, the numbers in the study could be more representative of current situations. Unless these assumptions are verified, we cannot cursorily correlate the increased proportion of bicyclists wearing helmets with an increase in bicycle-related accidents.
Secondly, the author also assumes that increased bicycle accidents are due to cyclists taking more risks. Interpreting data from the two studies, the author claims that cyclists become less cautious since they feel safer wearing helmets. However, there could be a myriad of other reasons why the number of bicycle accidents proliferated. For example, the number of automobiles on the road might increase throughout the ten years, resulting in a more crowded road and a precarious environment for cyclists. Furthermore, new policies might tolerate higher speed limits for cars and therefore threatening the safety for cyclists on the road. These examples would greatly undermine the assumption that the increase in bicycle accidents is due to the reckless behavior of cyclists.
Finally, the author assumes that the effectiveness of a policy can be determined by a single factor. The author concludes that governments should focus on educating people about bicycle safety rather than forcing them to wear helmets. However, this claim simply overlooks the fact the all policies are greatly intertwined and that different policies are designed to complement each other and work effectively. For example, if governments only educate people about bicycle safety but don't encourage people to wear helmets, cyclists might only slow down their speed and forget to wear helmets, which can be harmful to them if they encounter reckless motorcyclists.
In conclusion, the aforementioned assumptions need to be substantiated to reach the conclusion that the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 444 350
No. of Characters: 2435 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.59 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.484 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.917 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 198 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 157 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.368 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.442 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.535 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.126 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 484, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...educate people about bicycle safety but dont encourage people to wear helmets, cycli...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, conversely, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, look, second, secondly, so, therefore, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2490.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 443.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.62076749436 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58776254615 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98664280779 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.471783295711 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 767.7 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.2697926256 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.052631579 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3157894737 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.84210526316 5.70786347227 120% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.225324729585 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0669296878545 0.0743258471296 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0694521871825 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.135554777482 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0722589648267 0.0628817314937 115% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.61 12.5979740519 124% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.8 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.