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 accidents caused by bicycling 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, there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In this newsletter, the author used two surveys as evidence-in which the percentage of bicyclists wearing helmets has increased from 35 percent to 80 percent during a ten years period but the percentage of accidents occurrence has increased by 200 percent-to support the statement that bicyclists took more risky movements with helmets and then more accidents happened. Further on the author proposed that the government should take action to educate local bicyclists to take other means to secure their safety. Nevertheless, there is a series of questions among this analysis and induction which are important remaining to be answered before we jump into the conclusion. Those questions are as following.
First of all, considering this abnormality that higher percentage of helmet wearing leading to an increment in accident occurrences during the ten years period, the author argued it is because that the bicyclists felt safe with helmets and took risky moves. There is an unmentioned premise that the number of local cyclists stays similar. However, this is a question remaining to be answered. For example, if the answer toward the fact is that the number of bicyclists surged during that period and the increment of the bicyclists is much more than 200 percent comparing to the increment of accidents. In this case, it would indict that helmet wearing actually enhanced bicyclists’ safety instead, which would in turn put the author’s unmentioned premise “steady number of cyclists” remains unwarranted.
In addition to that, even if we concede on the hypothesis that the number if bicyclists do stay similar comparing to ten years ago, the reason for more accidents still stays questionable. We still have to question that if the traffic condition is still analogical to ten years ago. If the answer is, for instance, that the traffic condition becomes much more complex during those ten years with more cars and people taking part in the city’s daily traffic, the fact that more accidents involving bicyclists happened even though they did wear helmets while cycling could be explained by the more and more complex traffic situation among the local areas. Without a certain answer, the authors hasty jump to his/her conclusion that the cyclists risky moves are to blame would be questionable.
Last but not least, the author also proposed that the local government should take more efforts in launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet usage to secure the bicyclists’ safety. However, this proposal still remains to be checked. We have to raise a question about whether the bicyclists are to blame in most of those accidents happened to them or they are just part of the victims. If the answer is, for example, most of the problems are on the pedestrians for their jaywalking, it will make few effects to educate those bicyclists and the government should put more efforts in educating the pedestrians instead. Again, without a clear answer, the effectiveness of the author’s proposal remains unwarranted.
To put it together, there are still a lot of questions remaining to be answered with the given information. It is necessary for us to find out those answers before judging the validity of the author’s analysis and proposal.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 533 350
No. of Characters: 2696 1500
No. of Different Words: 219 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.805 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.058 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.661 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 158 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 105 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 75 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.65 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.762 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.522 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, however, if, nevertheless, so, still, then, while, for example, for instance, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2801.0 2260.96107784 124% => OK
No of words: 532.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26503759398 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80261649409 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.89949503968 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.424812030075 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 856.8 705.55239521 121% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 93.3380281557 57.8364921388 161% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.05 119.503703932 117% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.6 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.55 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
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: 0.175457824498 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0510207697112 0.0743258471296 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0653473840171 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101323805066 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0651802163387 0.0628817314937 104% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.37 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.