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."
The author of the argument makes several unjustified assumptions. The argument falls apart on careful analysis of these assumptions and the evidence provided by the author.
One of the assumption that argument makes is that the cell phone is the only factor contributing to sidewalk rage. There may be other factor like the condition of the sidewalk. If the sidewalks are not properly build and are broken at every few meters, the pedestrians might get frustarted causing them to take out their anger on the property and other pedestrian. Also, the argument does not provide any evidence for the claim that the cell phones are slowing down traffic.
Another assumption is that the cell phone ban has worked in Middletown as the reported incidents of sidewalk crime has gone down. Just because reported incidents have gone down doesn't mean that crime has actually gone down. It's possible that the number of crimes is same as before the ban, it's just that they have not been reported. It's possible that because of the cell phone ban, pedestrians did not have access to cell phone when the crime happened and thus might not have reported the incident later.
Argument also assumes that Centerville is same as Middletown, and that the law which worked in middletown will also work in Centerville. There may be different factors other than the cell phone for sidewalk rage in Centerville, and thus banning cell phone might not work.
The argument makes several assumptions, and analysis of these assumptions show that the argument is not logically sound. It would be a major mistake if Centerville adopt the law of banning the cell phone as it might not work.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 281 350
No. of Characters: 1353 1500
No. of Different Words: 129 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.094 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.815 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.464 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 80 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 67 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 52 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 25 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.071 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.946 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.385 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.651 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.135 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 178, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...cause reported incidents have gone down doesnt mean that crime has actually gone down....
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, if, may, so, thus
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 27.0 55.5748502994 49% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1395.0 2260.96107784 62% => OK
No of words: 280.0 441.139720559 63% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98214285714 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.09062348924 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53264149835 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 133.0 204.123752495 65% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.475 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 433.8 705.55239521 61% => 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: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => 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: 33.2511316364 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 99.6428571429 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.71428571429 5.70786347227 48% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0464501467118 0.218282227539 21% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0196779754886 0.0743258471296 26% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0226189334972 0.0701772020484 32% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0267823810548 0.128457276422 21% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0268142813499 0.0628817314937 43% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.6 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.5 8.32208582834 90% => OK
difficult_words: 51.0 98.500998004 52% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => 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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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.