The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
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 suggestion from housing director states that, Buckingham’s enrollment is growing at a faster rate which makes current dormitory capacity inadequate for new students and new dormitories should be built. Also, memo implies that, since apartment rents are going up in the town, students would not be able to afford off-campus homes, which is another reason to build new dormitories. However, the suggestion seems correct at first glance, but the memo lacks substantial evidence and the director seems to make some unstated assumptions without solid proof which makes the argument very weak.
Firstly, the director assumes that, since the enrollments are going high, even the demand for on campus residence will go high. However, there is no statistical data about increasing number of students or the trend of increasing students will continue for next 50 years. Some numerical data is required to evaluate this assumption. If the data suggests that, the pattern of increasing enrollments is random and there is no guarantee that the trend will continue for next 50 years, the prediction of director would be proved wrong. In contrast, even if the enrollments increase, building the new dormitories right now will be too soon according to the information given by the memo.
Secondly, there is no data about percentage of enrolled students interested in on campus housing, this data is crucial to decide on the future plan of building new dormitories. Students who are not local are the one’s who will be interested in on campus housing. What if all students enrolled in college are local students, then there will be no demand for on campus housing. More information is needed about number of local students, non local students and students who are interested in on campus housing among the enrolled students every year. Although, this data provides some insight, this may not be sufficient to draw a pattern since number of students every year is subjected to change.
Thirdly, it is mentioned in the memo that, apartment prices are going high in recent years, but again there is no numerical data about this theory. Despite of the increasing rents, some rich students might be able to afford the off campus housing and also it is probable that, many students consider living in off campus apartments on a sharing basis. So, this possibility reduces the percentage of students depending on on-campus housing. Moreover, the housing board director assumes that students get enrolled to college because of good looking and new dormitories, which is not true sometimes; students get admitted to a college for various reasons like, courses offered, teaching faculty, quality of education, location etc. More information is needed about the reason why students get enrolled to Buckingham college. If the evidence infers that, dormitory is not an influencing factor to get admitted to the college, then the director’s prediction will not stand any more.
To conclude, director of housing board extrapolates based on some unstated assumptions which might be proved false at later point of time. We need some statistical data to verify the authenticity of the argument and the evidence it provides, so it would be hard to predict that, building new dormitories on campus would be useful in near future. So, the college council should do thorough research before taking any decision based on recommendation of housing board director.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 14 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 554 350
No. of Characters: 2808 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.852 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.069 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.667 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 209 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 123 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.381 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.766 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.56 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, look, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, in contrast
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 81.0 55.5748502994 146% => OK
Nominalization: 20.0 16.3942115768 122% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2893.0 2260.96107784 128% => OK
No of words: 554.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22202166065 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85151570047 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7458860853 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 242.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.436823104693 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 891.9 705.55239521 126% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.9753019114 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.5 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1818181818 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.27272727273 5.70786347227 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.322966714975 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.102839484916 0.0743258471296 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0837204189772 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.192320803922 0.128457276422 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0564025362174 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.3799401198 109% => 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: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 122.0 98.500998004 124% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.