The following appeared in a recommendation from the President of the Amburg Chamber of Commerce.
"Last October, the city of Belleville installed high-intensity lighting in its central business district, and vandalism there declined almost immediately. The city of Amburg, on the other hand, recently instituted police patrols on bicycles in its business district. However, the rate of vandalism here remains constant. Since high-intensity lighting is clearly the most effective way to combat crime, we recommend using the money that is currently being spent on bicycle patrols to install such lighting throughout Amburg. If we install this high-intensity lighting, we will significantly reduce crime rates in Amburg."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument stated above is faulty for numerous reasons. Essentially, the author rests the argument on foundationless assumptions that Belleville and Amburg are similar, high intensity-lighting has led to the intended outcome and circumstances in one year will be identical for the next. Concluding the crime rates in Amburg will decline based on the prior stated assumptions is unreasonable.
Firstly, the author fails to provide evidence to support the suggested similarities between Belleville and Amburg. It is mentioned that Belleville installed high-intensity lighting and vandalism declined, but how can it surely be said that Amburg will demonstrate an identical trend? There is a possibility Belleville had a lower rate of crime rates in its central business district to start with and Amburg has the highest rate of crime in the entire country. If this is true, an illogical comparison is being established, rendering the correlation unreliable. On the other hand, if the author presented concrete statistics to illustrate the crime rates in the two cities have been identical for a hundred years, the argument would deem to be more plausible. In either case, the author ignores outside factors that could be playing a role in the perceived outcome.
Additionally, the argument neglects other presented issues. Imagine, rates of crime in both cities have been the same for centuries, it is still baseless to conclude vandalism will show a downwards trend in Amburg because the author continues to speculate other factors are not contributing to the results. For example, the distinctive reason that vandalism has declined in Belleville could be because along with the installation of high-intensity lighting, the city has also installed electric gates around the central businesses. Since trespassers might not be able to enter the area, they also might not be able to destroy property. If this is the case, the argument leads to an unjust conclusion. However, if the arguer shed light on information that confirmed the two central business districts have similar surrounding environment and the only differing attribute is the lighting, then the argument would hold more value. But even so, it is difficult to take into account all factors that cause divergence between the areas.
Lastly, the arguer builds the argument upon the installation of high-intensity lighting in Belleville from the previous year, discounting the possibility of change in the city. It is possible that the crime rates in Belleville decreased immediately after the appearance of the new lights but later that year crime rates began to climb again. Just because lighting showed and initial drop in crime rates does not mean crime rates will continue to stay low. For this reasoning, the argument is further undermined. Although, if the author provided data to ensure the crime rates indeed have stayed at a low, the argument could be strengthened.
As a result of the various unwarranted presumptions made by the argument, the author is unsuccessful in compiling a case to believe the rates of vandalism will decline after installing new, high-intensity lights in the central business district of Amburg.
Comments
e-rater score 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: 22 15
No. of Words: 505 350
No. of Characters: 2635 1500
No. of Different Words: 239 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.74 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.218 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.95 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 153 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 115 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.955 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.066 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.491 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.059 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, lastly, so, still, then, even so, for example, as a result, to start with, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2701.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 505.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.34851485149 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74048574033 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01565760086 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 244.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.483168316832 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 848.7 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.5366101271 57.8364921388 110% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.772727273 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.9545454545 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 19.0 6.88822355289 276% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.235066245595 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0691794999528 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0779432274567 0.0701772020484 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.15825179196 0.128457276422 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0511366069976 0.0628817314937 81% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.05 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.57 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.5 12.3882235529 101% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => 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.