The following is a petition to the city council of Centerville:
"Over the past three years, there has been a marked increase in cases of 'sidewalk rage,' similar to the irrational anger drivers experience on the road, but instead among sidewalk walkers. The result is an increase in assaults, property damage, and disruptions of normal pedestrian traffic. In order to address this growing problem, the council must ban cell phone use on sidewalks. Not only do people texting or using their phones slow down pedestrian traffic, but they are also more likely to walk into the road or bump into other walkers. Children are especially vulnerable because they are too short to be easily seen. Middletown passed such a ban and not only have they heard no complaints, but the reported incidents of sidewalk crime has gone down significantly."
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 case here is to ban the cell phone useage on the sidewalk so truncate the sidewalk crimes like assaults, property damage and disruptions in pedestrian traffic.
The petition filed to the city council of Centervile is riddled with a sundry of logical fallacies and assumptions which I will shed light on.
To begin with, it cannot be said that the abjuring the use of mobiles on the sidewalk has reduced the crime. What if it were because there were new subways built in that particular area, and that these pedestrians chose to take the subway instead of taking the sidewalk? With more people taking the subway, the number of people taking the sidewalk plummeted and there is very minimal pedestrian traffic and thereby reducing the pedestrian traffic and related crimes.
In addition, it is not mentioned that what category of people take the sidewalk. Are these people from the neighbourhood who are just going on a walk? Or are they working class people? This is not mentioned except for the fact that people might hurt children, which is a slim possibilty at best.
Furthermore, the prompt has not mentioned which part of the town is facing this issue. The locality is an indespensible factor here for us to make any kind of speculation. If the locality was the fast moving side of the town, then definetely the sidewalks would be a bit congested. And even if that were true, what would children be doing in an area that is full of offices and firms? Children ususally would be playing around in a park and not on sidewalks. Even if the locality was different, for example, a locality with old people/retired people, the possibilty of assults there would be very minimal as majority of the people are senile.
In conclusion, the argument has several unwarrented assumptions, it fails to make a convincing point that by banning the use of cell phones on the sidewalk has reduced sidewalk crimes and disruptions in pedestrian traffic.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 9 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 334 350
No. of Characters: 1572 1500
No. of Different Words: 169 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.275 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.707 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.557 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 111 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 81 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 56 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 30 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.721 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.32 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.086 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
furthermore, if, so, then, except for, for example, in addition, in conclusion, kind of, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1613.0 2260.96107784 71% => OK
No of words: 333.0 441.139720559 75% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.84384384384 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27180144563 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69046612641 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 172.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.516516516517 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 510.3 705.55239521 72% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.7025640377 57.8364921388 88% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.8125 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8125 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.375 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.108207415246 0.218282227539 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0364258604012 0.0743258471296 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0398695355655 0.0701772020484 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.06826468217 0.128457276422 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0348760734754 0.0628817314937 55% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.8 14.3799401198 82% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.79 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.0 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.