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 this argument, the author concludes that government should educate people about bicycle safety and less encourage bicyclists to wear helmets, because with more and more bicyclists wearing helmets, more accidents happened. Although there are two studies to demonstrate the recommendation, it is still replete with a myriad of assumptions which could not suffice to back the argument.
Firstly, the author indicates that there are more cyclists wearing helmets now on the basis of the fact that there are 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, and there are nearly 80 percent of cyclists wearing helmets now. However, this statement is unwarranted. The author only informs the portion of people who wear helmets, but the base number is unknown. Perhaps there are more than 1000 people driving bicyclists ten years ago, and there are 350 bicyclists who wear helmets. On the contrary, because of the promotion of car roads, there are more people driving cars to commute, less than 100 people taking bicycle to go to work or school now, and only less than 35 bicyclists wearing helmets. In this circumstance, there are fewer people who wear helmet now than 10 years ago, and cyclists will not feel safer. Thus, for lack of detailed information about the base number of the portion, we can hardly access whether cyclists feel safer or not.
Secondly, the assumption that bicyclists take more risks because the number of bicycle-related accidents has increased 200 percent in the past 10 years is unjustifiable. Those bicycle-related accidents may not all because of misbehavior of bicyclists. It is entirely possible that the regulations on vehicles and pedestrians are not strict enough so that there are increasing number of cars and pedestrians breaking traffic laws like running red lights and driving overspeed, which cause more accidents than before and bicyclists are actually victims. In order to strengthen the argument, the author should provide further details about how many accidents of those all bicycle-related accidents which are accused of bicyclists.
Thirdly, the author implicates that there are more serious injuries because there are more accidents happened now than before. But this implication is unconvincing because of lack of indispensable evidence to support the statement. More accidents do not necessarily lead to more injuries. If more bicyclists wear helmets, they will not be easy to get hurt from accidents, and with the development of safety equipment on cars, drivers of cars are safer than before. Therefore, without additional data and surveys that verify more injuries happen now than before, the recommendation is not convincing enough.
In a nutshell, the argument indefensible as it relies on certain doubtful assumptions and implications. To strengthen it, we would need to demonstrate the base number of the portion, the number of accidents that are attributed to bicyclists and injuries. Therefore, if the argument had included the given factors discussed above, it would have been more thorough and logically acceptable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-appeared…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 485 350
No. of Characters: 2539 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.693 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.235 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.812 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 156 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.095 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.047 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 123, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'percents'?
Suggestion: percents
...the basis of the fact that there are 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helm...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 199, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'percents'?
Suggestion: percents
...earing helmets, and there are nearly 80 percent of cyclists wearing helmets now. Howeve...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, then, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2611.0 2260.96107784 115% => OK
No of words: 485.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38350515464 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69283662038 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.90509098289 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.455670103093 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 801.0 705.55239521 114% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 60.8210639011 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.333333333 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0952380952 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.28571428571 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.205934557722 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0659828706649 0.0743258471296 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0835936395113 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106962010434 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0925427398128 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => 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: 14.22 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.33 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.