The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
"Commuters complain that increased rush-hour traffic on Blue Highway between the suburbs and the city center has doubled their commuting time. The favored proposal of the motorists' lobby is to widen the highway, adding an additional lane of traffic. But last year's addition of a lane to the nearby Green Highway was followed by a worsening of traffic jams on it. A better alternative is to add a bicycle lane to Blue Highway. Many area residents are keen bicyclists. A bicycle lane would encourage them to use bicycles to commute, and so would reduce rush-hour traffic rather than fostering an increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The author of this argument contends that one of a highway of the city named Blue Highway faces heavy traffic jams and the author claims that adding new car lane cannot be a good solution. To support he mentioned about Green Highway that adding lane increase the traffic jam on it. Finally, the author recommends that they have to add lane for bicycle and in this way they can decrease the number of hour in traffic jam. I find this argument logically unconvincing because it rests on not sufficient evidence.
The first problem of the argument is that the author relies on not solid and firm reports, and did not indicate that how many people exactly complain about the traffic jam in this highway. As you know, in the research the greater the number of participants the valid and reliable the findings are. Therefore, it is entirely possible that the number of people who complain about this situation was not significant and too low. Even if, assumes that the number of people who complain about the traffic jam was enough, the author overlooks the fact that the findings of the research can be generalized to the target population; therefore, the results of the research have to representative of the sample society on terms of age, gender, social class and career. Maybe, the most of the people who complain about traffic jam are pass this highway once a week because of their career on 7 am and the highway always have traffic jam on that exact time. Hence, they complain cannot representative of their sample society. In addition, the author did not mention about the methodology that used for collecting data. It is entirely possible that the methodology that used is problematic and the result tainted. In sum, without ruling these possibilities the author cannot convince me the results of these reports are valid and reliable to prove his claim.
The second problem of the argument is that the author assumes that the Blue Highway is identical to Green Highway in all respects. It is possible that more people pass from the Green highway in day than the Blue highway therefore, the additional lane on the Green Highway make the situation worse. However, maybe, adding the bicycle lane in the Green Highway could not solve the heavy traffic jam problem because the author did not provide sufficient and firm evidence to represent that the bicycle lane or additional care lane increase or decrease the traffic jam. To strengthen, the author have to provide more firm evidence to represent that these two highway have completely same condition and the author can compare them.
The final problem of the argument is that the author unfairly accounts that there is a correlation between using more bicycle and decreasing the traffic jam on the Blue highway. The correlation alone amounts to scant evidence to claimed cause and effects relationship. It is entirely possible that the highway become more crowded because of new shopping mall in the city center of city therefore, adding bicycle lane cannot have effects on decreasing the traffic jams.
In sum, according to all above mentioned, to convince me the author have to provide sufficient and solid evidence to prove his recommendation.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 540 350
No. of Characters: 2613 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.821 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.839 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.493 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.714 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.14 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.524 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.365 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.541 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, hence, however, if, look, may, second, so, then, therefore, in addition, you know
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 49.0 28.8173652695 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2673.0 2260.96107784 118% => OK
No of words: 540.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 4.95 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.82057051367 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.54851082152 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.37037037037 0.468620217663 79% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 841.5 705.55239521 119% => 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: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.3746634416 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.285714286 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.7142857143 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.61904761905 5.70786347227 81% => 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 : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => 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: 0.126647222034 0.218282227539 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0462977601881 0.0743258471296 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0414712705376 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0763959971129 0.128457276422 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0394175290575 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.73 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.45 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.