The following appeared in a letter to the editor in the journal Health Matters.
Statistics gathered over the past three decades show that the death rate is higher among who do not have jobs among those with regular employment. Unemployment, just like heart disease and cancer, is a significant health issue. While many health care advocates promote increased government funding for medical research and public health care, it would be folly to increase government spending if doing so were to affect the nation’s economy adversely and ultimately cause a rise in unemployment. A healthy economy means healthy citizens.
The author of this letter assumes that, the death rate is related to having a job and jobless are more vulnerable to death than those, who have jobs, based on statistical facts. Therefore, he claims that government funding should not be directed to health sector, because of the probability of unemployment rise. In contrast, he ended his letter with relating the prosperity of economy with the health of its citizens. Before this argument can be evaluated, three questions must be answered:
First of all, what is the age range of those, who the statistics is based on? Normally, when a worker reaches 60 years old, he retires and become jobless. Naturally, ages above 60 are more prospected to die more than youth, whom are under 60 years. For instance, the statistics for three decades would have been gathering date of retirees whom are very old, jobless and closer to death. If this probability holds any portion of truth, this would dismantle the whole argument, as it would have built its main assumption on fragile ground. Therefore, a careful study of the age groups of the statistics data is needed.
Secondly, how is the status of the public health? As health always comes before a job, the author shall study the condition of the public health. The reason, that some health advocates are promoting funds for public health, could be the deteriorating state of the citizens. For example, a plague is spreading in the country and it must be discontinued, therefore it requires not only a tremendous budget, but also assiduous efforts. This possibility might affect the author’s assumptions negatively and may even doubt his intentions. Thus, the public health status is an essential factor to evaluate this argument.
Finally, what are the reasons, that would cause unemployment to rise? Unemployment has many causes. Although funding is one of these factors, it is too superficial to decide preventing a raise to health care funding, that would have its negative effect somehow on the population. For example, in most of 3rd world countries, corruption is the first cause of unemployment, poverty and social injustice. Considering a country, that has corruption unchecked, this would easily boost unemployment rate. When this potential is eliminated, this would strengthen the assumptions of the author und thus, the argument. Otherwise, this could be an elusive hypothesis, that drive us away from the main reasons of unemployment.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is considerably flawed due to the shallow unwarranted assumptions, which it relies on. In order to evaluate this argument more efficiently, the author shall answer these three questions. Then and only then a better evaluation would be possible.
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: 26 15
No. of Words: 444 350
No. of Characters: 2214 1500
No. of Different Words: 229 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.59 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.986 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.714 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 161 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.077 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.3 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.577 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.265 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.479 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, for example, for instance, in conclusion, in contrast, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2304.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 444.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.18918918919 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5903493882 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87042900513 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.538288288288 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 703.8 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 14.0 4.96107784431 282% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.7825356481 57.8364921388 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 92.16 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.76 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.92 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.141139607818 0.218282227539 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0382315999207 0.0743258471296 51% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0502717473814 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0808824917994 0.128457276422 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0591582628414 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.9 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => 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.