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 author of the letter is writing a letter to Balmer Island city councils requesting the council to reduce the number of mopeds that can be available to rent during the summer season from the original 50 mopeds per day to a revised 25 mopeds per day per company. The author states that by reducing the number of mopeds that can be rented per day during the summer season, will reduce attain the 50% annual in moped accidents. The evidence that the author of this letter presents is that the neighboring island of Seaville achieved these results with similar moped restrictions to the number of mopeds that can be rented per day. It should be important to evaluate the claim provided by the author of the letter prior to making changes to moped renting policy. These questions must be answered in order for such a policy to be made official.
First of all, are mopeds a popular mode of transportation at Seaville as they are at Balmer? It is possible that mopeds are not as popular at Seaville, and that cutting the number of moped rentals allowed per day by a company had no real impact on the number of mopeds on the road. If this scenario has merit, then the author’s claim that reducing the number of rented mopeds per day will reduce the number of accidents has weakened.
Secondly, will reducing the number of mopeds during the summer season produce a 50% annual reduction in moped accidents? The author assumes that during the summer season that it is the tourists that are responsible for the vast majority of moped accidents. However, what if research collected from a year long study provided evidence that moped accidents happen at a consistent rate year long, and there is not a spike of the number of accidents during the summer season. A study like this, can provide evidence to weaken the author’s argument about needing to reduce the number of mopeds that can be rented per day during just the summer season.
What if the majority of moped accidents that take place on Balmer Island are caused by people who actually own mopeds and not by those who rent? In this case, reducing the number of mopeds that can be rented my not have a direct impact on moped related accidents. Since it maybe possible that people who own mopeds are responsible for most of the accidents on Balmer Island. If this scenario has merit, then the author’s conclusion from his argument has weakened.
In conclusion, as the argument is flawed, as it stands now. There are too many assumptions that the author relies on for this argument to be valid. If answers are able to be provided to the three previously mentioned scenarios, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the claim that reducing the number of mopeds rented per day will help to decrease the number of moped accidents.
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: 19 15
No. of Words: 490 350
No. of Characters: 2248 1500
No. of Different Words: 172 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.705 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.588 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.332 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 185 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 92 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 28 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.789 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.993 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.421 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.407 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.159 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 168, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
...ds that can be available to rent during the summer season from the original 50 mopeds per day to ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 356, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
...opeds that can be rented per day during the summer season, will reduce attain the 50% annual in m...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 429, 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.
...tain the 50% annual in moped accidents. The evidence that the author of this letter...
^^^
Line 5, column 16, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[1]
Message: The verb 'will' requires the base form of the verb: 'reduce'
Suggestion: reduce
...cidents has weakened. Secondly, will reducing the number of mopeds during the summer ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 53, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
...ll reducing the number of mopeds during the summer season produce a 50% annual reduction in moped...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 153, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
...cidents? The author assumes that during the summer season that it is the tourists that are respon...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 454, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
...spike of the number of accidents during the summer season. A study like this, can provide evidenc...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 629, Rule ID: THE_FALL_SEASON[1]
Message: Use simply 'summer'.
Suggestion: summer
... that can be rented per day during just the summer season. What if the majority of moped accid...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2304.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 490.0 441.139720559 111% => OK
Chars per words: 4.70204081633 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70488508055 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.41273864901 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 178.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.363265306122 0.468620217663 78% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 726.3 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.8477116035 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 121.263157895 119.503703932 101% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.7894736842 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.73684210526 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 8.0 5.25449101796 152% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.25674692448 0.218282227539 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.105690286069 0.0743258471296 142% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0670381291057 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.17146863422 0.128457276422 133% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0531567109834 0.0628817314937 85% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.28 12.5979740519 82% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.42 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 79.0 98.500998004 80% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 17.5 12.3882235529 141% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => 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.