The following is a memorandum from the office of Mayor Harrison Smith Jones.
"In order to relieve Briggsville’s notorious traffic congestion, Mayor Harrison Smith Jones plans to build a multi-million dollar subway system. The subway will run through the major downtown areas, a part of the town where buses serve as the only form of public transportation. For years, residents have been complaining both about inconsistent buses, and the general lack of safety while riding the buses. Additionally, the subway will be running twenty-four hours a day. Since motorists will spend less time in traffic, Mayor Harrison Smith Jones expects to see an immediate increase in worker productivity, which will improve the economy of Briggsville."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The memorandum recieved from the Mayor's office regarding the traffic problem in Briggsville, which aims to improve the economy of the city by curtailing traffic congestions raises few concerns. Before taking further action on the proposed solution by the mayor, a few statements on unwarranted assumptions need to be elucidated.
First, the proposal states that the subway will run twenty four hours everyday to reduce the traffic in the city. The mayor assumes the residents in Briggsvile require public transport throughout the day or night. It is possible that the residents use public transport only during the day or until midnight; not twenty four hours. This unnecessary runtime of subway may adversely affect the economy of the city, instead of improving it. Thus, project of constructing the subway is already an expensive one, and running the subway line 24 hours may not be improve the city's economy as visioned by the mayor.
Secondly, the main motivation, as apparent from the memorandum, to construct the metro is to see an increase in economy. However, the costs involved to maintain the subway is not assumed to affect the economy. There could be a variety of things overlooked here such as daily fuel requirements, electricity, repairing seats, cleaning, etc. If such things are not accounted for, then the economy may be negatively affected.
Thirdly, the mayor assumes that the major downtown area are the most congested with traffic. It may be possible that other areas adjacent to the downtown areas are more affected by the traffic congestions. More information on the traffic statistics of the complete Brigsville city is needed to warrant this assumption. If this turns out to be true, then the problem of traffic may not be resolved even after spending millions on the subway construction project.
Since the memorandum from the office of Mayor needs further information to support a few assumptions, further actions as of now may not be taken to proceed with the subway construction. As soon as enough supportive evidence is provided for the assumptions, the project may be given a green signal to build the subway.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 350 350
No. of Characters: 1754 1500
No. of Different Words: 176 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.325 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.011 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.715 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.83 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.35 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.599 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.091 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 53, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: twenty-four
...roposal states that the subway will run twenty four hours everyday to reduce the traffic in...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 71, Rule ID: EVERYDAY_EVERY_DAY[3]
Message: 'Everyday' is an adjective. Did you mean 'every day'?
Suggestion: every day
...t the subway will run twenty four hours everyday to reduce the traffic in the city. The ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 313, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: twenty-four
...y during the day or until midnight; not twenty four hours. This unnecessary runtime of subw...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, look, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 10.0 28.8173652695 35% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1804.0 2260.96107784 80% => OK
No of words: 350.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.15428571429 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.32530772707 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81317019226 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.531428571429 0.468620217663 113% => OK
syllable_count: 554.4 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 31.1967747424 57.8364921388 54% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 106.117647059 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5882352941 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.82352941176 5.70786347227 102% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.20112769139 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0676859266248 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0525821027362 0.0701772020484 75% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.115574418287 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0365632915074 0.0628817314937 58% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.82 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.