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.
In the data provided and the reasoning made by the author in the given claim seems valid but when examined meticulously, it reveals several flaws and unsubstantiated assumptions. Details associating mopeds with accidents in the Balmer Island do not provide concrete evidence which renders the author's line of reasoning weak and quite cogent.
To begin, use of mopeds has been stated to be popular among people at the Balmer Island but not explicitly mentioned as the mode of transportation that is used by majority of its citizens. This calls into question, the assumption that accidents are caused only by mopeds on the island. What if cars or buses account for the majority of accidents occurring on the island? This would render the policy of reducing rented mopeds irrelevant. Data giving information regarding the actual cause of the accidents could be analysed to make a relatively astute judgement and assist the island council to come up with a more pragmatic set of rules.
Furthermore, the increase in the number of people on the island during summer months by over a 100,000 does not provide any support for the town council's decision. Reducing the number of mopeds rented form 50 per day to 25 per day may have a negligible effect considering the myriad of people that come to the island even if reducing mopeds decreases accidents. The actual number out of those 100,000 people who use mopeds have also not been specified; quantification of this factor might provide an insight into whether people are actually are prone to moped accidents or not. This could allow the town council to reconsider their decision.
Moreover , the author makes a naive comparison of the the town of Seaville and Balmer Island as their populations, transportation details and areas have been presumed to be similar. Seaville town may consist of a large population living on a small area of land due to which accidents caused by mopeds may relatively be more than that on Balmer Island. In such a scenario restricting the quantity of mopeds rented may turn out to be fruitful but only if Balmer Island also has the same conditions. Further, 50 percent decrease in moped accidents can only be associated with Seaville and not with Balmer Island as the number of accidents in both the town have not been studied. Provision of data may lead to conclusions that may support or undermine the town council’s current decision.
Hence, it could be concluded that the assumptions made by the author are extremely delicate in nature due to not enough evidence to support them. Many other questions could also be raised which can undermine the author's reasoning. In order to achieve stability in his/her claim, it is imperative that the author provide more details to back his arguments.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 465 350
No. of Characters: 2272 1500
No. of Different Words: 217 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.644 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.886 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.641 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.474 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.375 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.684 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.334 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 9, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...o reconsider their decision. Moreover , the author makes a naive comparison of ...
^^
Line 7, column 51, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: the
... the author makes a naive comparison of the the town of Seaville and Balmer Island as t...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 51, Rule ID: DT_DT[1]
Message: Maybe you need to remove one determiner so that only 'the' or 'the' is left.
Suggestion: the; the
... the author makes a naive comparison of the the town of Seaville and Balmer Island as t...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, furthermore, hence, if, may, moreover, regarding, so
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2320.0 2260.96107784 103% => OK
No of words: 464.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64119157421 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73647273666 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.469827586207 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 737.1 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.6869102643 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.105263158 119.503703932 102% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4210526316 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.84210526316 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.265171186016 0.218282227539 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0853398983122 0.0743258471296 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0636524283213 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137600371294 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0803517106207 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.02 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.74 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 115.0 98.500998004 117% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.