The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.
"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument makes several unstated assumptions and hence, is not well reasoned. While it may be true that reducing the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies during summer could decrease the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the author's unsubstantiated argument utterly fails to weave a cogent case to prove it.
The author makes a crucial error in logic when it assumes that the majority of mopeds plying on roads during summer are rented ones. Instead, being a popular mode of transport, the majority of mopeds could be owned by the residents and the overall contribution of mopeds through rental could be minuscule. Had the author provided the data on moped ownership, the logic could have been stronger. Thus moped companies own the majority share of mopeds is an unstated assumption.
Also troubling is the argument's assumption that moped accidents are solely driven by the number of mopeds on the road. Accidents can be a function of a lot many factors and singling one reason out with supporting statistics weakens the argument. For example, accidents could be driven by bad road conditions; adverse weather; lack of adherence to traffic rules or just poor public transport infrastructure. Had the argument taken into account the other factors, the logic would have been more cogent. Therefore, moped accidents can not be solely attributed to the number of mopeds on road.
One more area where the argument fails to impress is that it assumes the increase in population during summer leads to higher usage of mopeds. The moped usage could be popular with those who stay permanently rather than amongst those who arrive in summer. Maybe those who arrive in summer prefer public infrastructure. If the argument would have provided the data on the increase of moped usage along with an increase in population in summer the logic would hold more water.
Another unstated attribution the argument makes is that the neighbouring island of Seaville has the same conditions as Balmer Island. As discussed before, accidents could be driven by one, more or a combination of several factors. Equating two neighbouring islands is not logical unless other factors remain the same for both the islands. Seaville island could have favourable weather, good road condition, better traffic discipline, public transport infrastructure, a major share of moped usage through rental and so on. Unless all these conditions match, drawing an analogy may be logically incoherent.
To conclude, the author makes many unaddressed assumptions that seriously undermine its validity. Unless these underlying assumptions are addressed, the argument falls apart, the conclusion that reducing the number of mopeds rented during summer could decrease the number of accidents could be flawed.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 447 350
No. of Characters: 2318 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.598 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.186 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.654 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 186 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.318 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.789 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.409 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.335 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.574 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.084 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 357, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ils to weave a cogent case to prove it. The author makes a crucial error in logi...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...of mopeds is an unstated assumption. Also troubling is the arguments assumption t...
^^^^
Line 5, column 23, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'arguments'' or 'argument's'?
Suggestion: arguments'; argument's
...ed assumption. Also troubling is the arguments assumption that moped accidents are sol...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 320, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...in summer prefer public infrastructure. If the argument would have provided the da...
^^
Line 7, column 336, Rule ID: IF_WOULD_HAVE_VBN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'had provided'?
Suggestion: had provided
... public infrastructure. If the argument would have provided the data on the increase of moped usage...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, if, may, so, therefore, thus, well, while, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 17.0 28.8173652695 59% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2377.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 447.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31767337808 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59808378696 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73951222036 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.460850111857 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 747.9 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 0.0 4.96107784431 0% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.6272718775 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.045454545 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.3181818182 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.27272727273 5.70786347227 57% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.231834568935 0.218282227539 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0728906951751 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0601270001551 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.133778719139 0.128457276422 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0315737238678 0.0628817314937 50% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
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: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.55 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.