The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.
"The population on Balmer Island doubles during the summer months. During the summer, then, the town council of Balmer Island should decrease the maximum number of moped rentals allowed at each of the island's six moped and bicycle rental companies from 50 per day to 30 per day. This will significantly reduce the number of summertime accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians. The neighboring island of Torseau actually saw a 50 percent reduction in moped accidents last year when Torseau's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals. To help reduce moped accidents, therefore, we should also enforce these limitations during the summer months."
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 the letter to the editor of Balmer Island Gazette, the author has concluded that to reduce moped accidents the town council of Balmer Island should follow the footsteps of Torseau Island and reduce the maximum number of moped and bicycle rentals. However, the author has overlooked various relevant points and made numerous fallacious assumptions during making this conclusion. Unless these relevant points are considered and the assumptions validated with substantial proof, I find it hard to believe that the reduction in accident observed in Torseau will also been seen in Balmer.
The author states that during summer the population of Balmer doubles but does not provide any evidence to support his assumption that all these people rent mopeds or bicycles. The increase could be simply due to students who return home during the summer break. They in turn could be accompanied by their friends. These people are unlikely to rent mopeds and bicycles as they will have their own means of communication. Tourists visiting Balmer may also bring their own means of communication – a car, moped or bicycle and not use the rental facility in Balmer. Thus, the author should provide detailed statistics to show that moped rentals indeed increase in summer. Only then can we support the idea that decreasing the rentals could plausibly reduce accidents.
Even if I assume the fact that most of the people visiting Balmer use the rental facilities, the author has provided no information to bolster his claim that the high rentals are responsible for the accidents. There are other possible reasons for accidents, which the author has conveniently overlooked. For example, the road conditions and traffic rules in Balmer may be very bad. Balmer island could lack proper footpaths and pedestrian crossings. There is also a possibility that the original residents of Balmer are rash drivers and are involved in most of the accidents. Another reason for accidents could be carelessness of pedestrians while walking on the road. One should also not ignore the fact that reducing bike and bicycle rentals may increase car rentals and this might have a detrimental effect on the number of accidents and increase the number of accidents. Unless other possible causes of accidents are not ruled out, it would be preposterous to say that reducing rentals will cause a decline in the number of accidents.
To support his claim, the author has finally given the example of Torseau where a decrease in moped and bicycle rental has been successful in decreasing the number of accidents. Here again there are loopholes in the arguments which the author needs to consider. Firstly, the author has assumed without any proof to support the same, that the two island are similar geographically and the results seen in Troseau will also be replicated in Balmer. The road condition and traffic rules in Torseau could be much better than those in Balmer. Similarly, the city council in Torseau have possible adopted other road safety measures that have resulted in a decline in the number of accidents. Also, the terrain of the two island could be different. Balmer could have hilly and tortuous roads where the probability of accidents is high and simply reducing the number of rental mopeds and bicycles will not have the desired effect. There could be another obvious reason for the decrease in accidents in Torseau. The number of people staying there has decreased and also the number of people visiting Torseau has lessened over the year. Therefore, there are less accidents. These points collectively or individually may contribute to the decrease in the number of accidents in Troseau which is not linked to decrease in rental limits.
With no cogent answers to address the points raised above, I would like to conclude that the author has failed to provide sufficient evidence in favor of his argument. To augment his claim, he should address the above concerns raised with proper statistical, demographic and geographical data. Only then can one believe his conclusion that limiting moped and bicycle rental in Balmer will reduce accidents.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 1149, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun accidents is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...ned over the year. Therefore, there are less accidents. These points collectively or...
^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'finally', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'look', 'may', 'similarly', 'so', 'then', 'therefore', 'thus', 'while', 'for example']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.266206896552 0.25644967241 104% => OK
Verbs: 0.164137931034 0.15541462614 106% => OK
Adjectives: 0.071724137931 0.0836205057962 86% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0496551724138 0.0520304965353 95% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0248275862069 0.0272364105082 91% => OK
Prepositions: 0.12275862069 0.125424944231 98% => OK
Participles: 0.0510344827586 0.0416121511921 123% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.5999050315 2.79052419416 93% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0248275862069 0.026700313972 93% => OK
Particles: 0.00137931034483 0.001811407834 76% => OK
Determiners: 0.106206896552 0.113004496875 94% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0386206896552 0.0255425247493 151% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0110344827586 0.0127820249294 86% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 4138.0 2731.13054187 152% => OK
No of words: 675.0 446.07635468 151% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.13037037037 6.12365571057 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.09713273454 4.57801047555 111% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.422222222222 0.378187486979 112% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.277037037037 0.287650121315 96% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.180740740741 0.208842608468 87% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.10962962963 0.135150697306 81% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5999050315 2.79052419416 93% => OK
Unique words: 273.0 207.018472906 132% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.404444444444 0.469332199767 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 50.0709254645 52.1807786196 96% => OK
How many sentences: 32.0 20.039408867 160% => OK
Sentence length: 21.09375 23.2022227129 91% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.0321321247 57.7814097925 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.3125 141.986410481 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.09375 23.2022227129 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.5 0.724660767414 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 48.7974537037 51.9672348444 94% => OK
Elegance: 1.84393063584 1.8405768891 100% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.623166203913 0.441005458295 141% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.127261719314 0.135418324435 94% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.063739470049 0.0829849096947 77% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.515184010815 0.58762219726 88% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.151609904297 0.147661913831 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.245132056253 0.193483328276 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.140018885935 0.0970749176394 144% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.504290941656 0.42659136922 118% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.127733119088 0.0774707102158 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.457994862744 0.312017818177 147% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.120301657261 0.0698173142475 172% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.33743842365 132% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 17.0 6.87684729064 247% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.82512315271 83% => OK
Positive topic words: 9.0 6.46551724138 139% => OK
Negative topic words: 15.0 5.36822660099 279% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 26.0 14.657635468 177% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.