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.
The argument that government should educate people about bicycle safety and reduce effort on encouraging bicyclist to wear helmet so as to reduce number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents make a number of unwarranted assumption that need to be scrutinized. Taken as a whole, these unstated assumptions render the argument highly suspect. Indeed, if these assumptions do not hold true, the argument totally falls apart.
The first in the leap argument is the assumption that the same population that was studied ten years ago was the same population that was studied recently. The first study was carried out for close to a decade ago. Things have changed. The population must have increased tremendously. Thus , the amount of cyclist too must have increased. In order to show the validity of this statistics, the author needs to show the amount of people that were included in the first study and the amount of people that were included in the second study. The result numbers of this analogy will determine if there was actual increase in the amount of bicyclist who had accident or not.
Another major leap in the argument is the assumption that bicyclist feel safer using helmet and thus, riding carelessly. This doesn’t sound true as there might be other causes of this increase in bicyclist accidents. One of such cause might be the bad state of road or reckless driving of car owners. There are many factors that could lead to increase in bicyclists accidents in the town. Thus, if the argument does not prove that only bicyclists’ recklessness lead to increase in bicyclists accidents, the argument is invalid.
Furthermore, the argument that government concentrating more on educating people about bicycle accident will lead to a decrease in bicycle accident. This might not be the case as we don’t know if these people that to be educated do ride bicycle. Most people might not even have a bicycle, talk less of riding one. Thereby leading to government wasting it resources on educating people who have no penchant for riding bicycle. If the argument shows no prove that the people to be educated are bicycle riders or actually own a bicycle, then, the assumption that the opinion of government educating people about danger of bicycle leading to decrease in bicycle accident is flawed.
Finally, the argument claimed that government reducing it effort on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets will lead to deduction in bicyclist accident. This is - in actual sense - not reasonable as the idea of government not encouraging or requiring bicyclist to wear helmets will only lead to increase in more bicycle accidents. Thus, the argument is flawed by assuming that government reducing it effort to require bicyclist will reduce bicycle accidents.
However, for the argument to be strengthened, the author needs to show the numbers behind the study conducted recently and ten years ago. These numbers will show the actual increase or decrease number of bicyclist accidents. The argument also need to show that government are educating the bicycle riders and not those who don’t have bicycle.
In conclusion, the argument that government reducing its effort in encouraging bicyclist to wear helmet and increasing it effort on educating people about bicycle accident will lead to decrease in bicycle accident makes numerous unstated assumptions that seriously debilitate it validity. Unless these unwarranted assumptions are addressed, the argument totally falls apart. Thus, government might be making a major mistake by not requiring bicyclist to wear helmets and educating the general populace instead of bicycle owners.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 591 350
No. of Characters: 3001 1500
No. of Different Words: 206 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.931 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.078 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.658 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 236 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 180 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 129 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 77 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.379 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.915 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.621 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.153 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 131, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...on encouraging bicyclist to wear helmet so as to reduce number of serious injuries from ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 290, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...n must have increased tremendously. Thus , the amount of cyclist too must have inc...
^^
Line 3, column 373, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...eased. In order to show the validity of this statistics, the author needs to show th...
^^^^
Line 10, column 334, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'bicycled'.
Suggestion: bicycled
...cle riders and not those who don’t have bicycle. In conclusion, the argument that go...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, second, so, then, thus, as to, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3085.0 2260.96107784 136% => OK
No of words: 588.0 441.139720559 133% => OK
Chars per words: 5.24659863946 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.9242980521 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74162745133 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.365646258503 0.468620217663 78% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 972.0 705.55239521 138% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 17.0 8.76447105788 194% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => 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: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.2864315141 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.379310345 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.275862069 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.51724137931 5.70786347227 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 17.0 6.88822355289 247% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.166915807588 0.218282227539 76% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0523621260194 0.0743258471296 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.055365616266 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.102520739007 0.128457276422 80% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0405897532667 0.0628817314937 65% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.17 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.29 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
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.