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 author proposes concentrating more on educating people about bicycle safety rather than encouraging bicyclists to wear helmets. He or she offers an interesting argument but it suffers from some logical flaws and gaps in evidence. While connections suggested are reasonable, there are many other possible scenarios that should discourage the government from focusing more on educating bicycle safety and neglecting encouraging bicyclists to wear helmets.
To begin with, the author presents the study that suggests the increase in the number of bicycle-related accidents to his or her claim. However the phrase "bicycle-related accidents" could be misleading because it is too vague. Does it include only accidents that occur during driving? Or are accidents such as stealing other's bicycle, damaging other's bicycle for fun, etc are altogether included? Because, such events are not related to wearing helmets or bicycling, we should access to study more precisely before claiming the government should reduce educations which encourage the bicyclists to wear helmet. What is more, even though we assume that the study only includes the accidents which are related to bicycling and helmet, comparing only the absolute number of incidence could be misleading. If the bicyclists have increased 1,000 percent during the same ten-year period, for example, then the ratio of accidents to bicyclists has been declined one to fifth during the same period. Therefore it is hasty to conclude that wearing helmets make bicyclist to take more risks and cause the increment in the accidents.
Secondly, the author unfairly assumes that wearing helmet is the reason of accidents boost. Yet there is no reason to believe that wearing helmet is the primary reason of increment in accidents for several reasons. First of all, the traffic condition differs a lot during the period. The traffic condition become more complicated because more people drive their cars, more traffic lights, more road, etc. Secondly, the accidents can occur even though there is no bicyclist fault. Drunken driver might just bump to bicycle or the pedestrians might run across the road even though the traffic light was red. Therefore it is unfair to claim that boost in accidents was primarily due to wearing helmet.
Finally, let us assume, though, that the above assumptions will all hold up. We are then prompted to ask the whether the number of serious injuries reduce by encouraging less to wear helmets. The author offers no information about seriousness of the accidents. The accidents might cause minor injuries because the bicyclists wear helmets. The injuries might be more serious if they did not wear helmets properly. Therefore without the information about magnitude of these accidents, it is hasty to conclude that decrease in serious injuries will be accompanied by concentrating on bicycle safety rather than wearing helmets.
A close examination of all the assumptions made in the author's proposal reveals that the government does not have enough justification to centering bicycle safety and relegating wearing helmets to peripheral. Although the proposal certainly points out a possible course of action, the government should not act until they have more information.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 509 350
No. of Characters: 2697 1500
No. of Different Words: 233 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.75 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.299 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.71 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 223 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 77 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.36 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.552 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.64 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.312 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.508 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 137, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...-related accidents to his or her claim. However the phrase 'bicycle-related accide...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1004, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...ed one to fifth during the same period. Therefore it is hasty to conclude that wearing he...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 607, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
... even though the traffic light was red. Therefore it is unfair to claim that boost in acc...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 340, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...es because the bicyclists wear helmets. The injuries might be more serious if they ...
^^^
Line 7, column 414, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
... if they did not wear helmets properly. Therefore without the information about magnitude...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 56, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...tion of all the assumptions made in the authors proposal reveals that the government do...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, while, for example, such as, first of all, to begin with, what is more
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2768.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 509.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.43811394892 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74984508646 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84394966258 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 245.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481335952849 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 864.0 705.55239521 122% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 50.0331990374 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.461538462 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5769230769 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.5 5.70786347227 96% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.232662466735 0.218282227539 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0677988168657 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0520488140951 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.126056116754 0.128457276422 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0429309573269 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.27 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.96 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.