The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.
"In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend — the city-run public schools — comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools — even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do."
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 writer of the argument argues that Parson City places higher importance to good education than Blue city does. It is based on the premises that Parson City has increased its spending both in proportion of tax revenues and in absolute terms to twice that of Blue City. The argument seems true at first sight, however, on deeper analysis it becomes clear that certain relevant aspects have not been taken into account, leading to a number of unverified evidences.
One such unverified evidence is the analogical relationship that tax revenues of Parson City and Blue City remain same during last year, but spending by Parson City on public schools as proportion of tax revenues and in absolute terms is twice that of Blue City. However, there may be the case that where tax revenues of Parson City has increased to twice that of its tax revenues for last 3 years, therefore, enabling Parson City to spend these extra revenues on education. For example, the study concluded by Finance Commission of India 2012 concluded that 5 federal States were able to increase their spending in 2013 on welfare and public infrastructure because of unexpected increase in their tax revenues during 2012, but the spending was of only rare occurrence. Therefore, these States cannot be considered for weighing extra importance to welfare measures. Thus, in order to overcome this flaw, the writer should evaluate the evidence on tax revenues of these two cities for last 5 years.
Moreover, the writer has ignored the unverified evidence on cause and effect that increase in spending on education signifies higher importance to good education. However, there may be the case that the number of students in this city is twice that of in Blue City since public schools of Parson City is considered highly ranked, and therefore, residents of other cities get their children enrolled in public schools of this city. Therefore, though the residents of Parson and Blue city are same but number of students in Parson City is higher which forced the school authorities to increase the expenditure as per number of students enrolled in schools. Therefore, to render the argument more valid, the writer should evaluate the evidence on number of students enrolled in schools of Parson City and ranking of its public schools.
Finally, the writer has arbitrarily confounded the evidence on recent amount and proportion of spending on education that what has been spent lately by Parson City can be accepted as sample for future and for all previous years as well. However, there may be the case that due to the increase in number of students in their schools in the last 3 years, Parson City could not afford to spend corresponding amount due to the constant tax revenues, therefore it faced shortfall in education spending for last 3 years. But, due to the unexpected increase in revenue lately, it made up the shortfall of last 3 years and doubled its spending on education. Therefore, in order to strengthen the argument, the writer should evaluate the evidence on pattern of spending and number of students for last 3 years for Parson City.
While concluding, after close examination of the argument presented, it is apparent that the argument as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on certain unverified evidences. The recommendations in the above paragraphs show how the argument may be strengthened and made more logically sound in order to evaluate the viability of the argument.
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: 18 15
No. of Words: 580 350
No. of Characters: 2851 1500
No. of Different Words: 205 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.907 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.916 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.605 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 220 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 126 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 32.222 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.02 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.889 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.407 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.619 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.162 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 95.0 55.5748502994 171% => OK
Nominalization: 31.0 16.3942115768 189% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2926.0 2260.96107784 129% => OK
No of words: 580.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 5.04482758621 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90746259869 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67330296665 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.362068965517 0.468620217663 77% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 923.4 705.55239521 131% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 32.0 22.8473053892 140% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 56.6027144574 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 162.555555556 119.503703932 136% => OK
Words per sentence: 32.2222222222 23.324526521 138% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.55555555556 5.70786347227 97% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.200363351539 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.081900496586 0.0743258471296 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0793696923635 0.0701772020484 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.1205896572 0.128457276422 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0807261136314 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.4 14.3799401198 128% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.0 48.3550499002 81% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.54 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.06 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.8 11.1389221557 133% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.