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.
35per ago != 80 of now, unclear type of accident,
The author of the newsletter belives that if they government focuses more on educating people on bicycle saftey rather than promoting wearing of helmets then the number of accidents will decrease. This however is a flawed assumption, the following points will help elaborate the unwarranted claims made by the author and their implications.
The author compares how eariler 35 percent of cyclist wore helmets and not the number is upto 80 percent and also that the number of accidents has increased by 200 percent. These are separate claims from different studies of the same period, it hasn't been mentioned whether the studies were conducted on the same group of people or the in the same city or country, one study may be done on cyclist of london and other on cylist of tokyo. He makes an general assumption that the studies were based on the same sample space or data. Also, a lot can happen in a time frame of ten years. The number of accidents may have risen as the number of riders decreased and swithced to other means of travel. Which means less accidents took place. This fataly impairs how the reader perceives this letter.
The increase in number of accidents has been related to wearing of helmets and carelessness of the rider, but no data has been used to backup this claim by the author. The accidents can be due to increased traffic of motor vechiles and high speed motor cars unable to stop as fast as a cyclist can on a red ligth, tail ending the rider. Whereas ten years ago the number of cars on the road were significantly less so the number of accidents having cycles was also less. Which brings us to the point that, no clear mention of the parties in the accident has been stated in the passage. Which can be interpreted as cycle-cycle or cycle-car collosions making the comparison abstruse.
The author has a major flaw of understading, he assumes wearing helmets can prevent accidents which isn't true. This statement can't be proved by the statistical date the author is trying to provide the readers with. Helmet is just used as protection equipment to prevent fatal injuries to the head and in no way does it prevent accidents. So, asking the government to less emphazise on this would mean to compromise public safety and hinder his very own position on the matter.
The following points impair the authors clams and severly weaken the viability of the author to ask for better education on safety, which is important to prevent accidents. But, it cannot be proved that accidents are caused by promoton of wearing helments. They are done to promote safety by the government and should be conitnued in my opinion.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 12 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 25 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 471 350
No. of Characters: 2184 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.659 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.637 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.463 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.409 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.801 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.074 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 50, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... != 80 of now, unclear type of accident, The author of the newsletter belives tha...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 246, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: hasn't
...ifferent studies of the same period, it hasnt been mentioned whether the studies were...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 448, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
... and other on cylist of tokyo. He makes an general assumption that the studies wer...
^^
Line 5, column 709, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun accidents is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...d to other means of travel. Which means less accidents took place. This fataly impai...
^^^^
Line 7, column 133, Rule ID: CAN_BACKUP[1]
Message: Did you mean 'to back up'?
Suggestion: to back up
...of the rider, but no data has been used to backup this claim by the author. The accidents...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 101, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: isn't
...ing helmets can prevent accidents which isnt true. This statement cant be proved by ...
^^^^
Line 9, column 127, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...cidents which isnt true. This statement cant be proved by the statistical date the a...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, may, so, then, whereas, in my opinion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2256.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 469.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 4.81023454158 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65364457471 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.51333789229 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.518123667377 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 691.2 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.5252737805 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.428571429 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3333333333 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.90476190476 5.70786347227 51% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.175565183581 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0481325512882 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0556698256909 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0827738174493 0.128457276422 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0375499879288 0.0628817314937 60% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.4 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.91 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.2 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.