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 prompt assumes that cell phones take the major blame for sidewalk rage and that banning them should solve the majority of the problems. To further validate his or her point, the author states that Middletown has recently passed a ban on cellphones on sidewalks and have seen a decrease in the number of sidewalk crimes.
The author takes a lot of unstated assumptions while making this argument. The first assumption is that people using their cellphones slow down the oncoming sidewalk traffic which is not always correct. What if the sidewalks are broken or there are no proper sidewalks? What if the city of Centerville has recently been building new sidewalks that cause this sidewalk rage? This unbuilt road can cause people of the city to get frustrated and damage the city council's property. Also, very naive reasoning given against cell phone usage is that people walk on to roads while using them which is an absurd assumption to make. People are more likely to walk on roads if the sidewalks are under construction or broken than if they are using cell phones.
The author then gives the example of Middletown and says that since the ban was in effect no complaints have arrived and the incidents of sidewalk rage have also decreased significantly. This can mean one of two things. Either banning cellphones was actually useful or that due to the ban people were unable to register their complaints via a cellphone. Also, the author of the prompt says that reported incidents have gone down significantly. But what if the rates of sidewalk crime are already low in Centerville as compared to Middletown. Without providing any numbers it will be difficult to reach any conclusion. Moreover, other factors like the population of the city, the infrastructure provided by the city council, the condition of sidewalks etcetera play an important role that the author has conveniently avoided.
Another assumption that the author makes is that the children are smaller in height and thus would be difficult to identify while using a cellphone. This sounds like a far-fetched assumption to make. It depends on whether the user of the cellphone is using the cellphone to make calls or to look intently at the screen. So a better way around the issue is to ban texting but not ban making calls. Cause, the users are more aware of where they are walking while making calls but the same cannot be said for texting.
After reviewing such unstated assumptions we find many logical flaws in the argument presented and it would be better if a detailed analysis was done before reaching to hasty measures like banning cellphones.
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 448 350
No. of Characters: 2161 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.601 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.824 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.54 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 150 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.364 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.589 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.285 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.491 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 460, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'councils'' or 'council's'?
Suggestion: councils'; council's
...y to get frustrated and damage the city councils property. Also, very naive reasoning gi...
^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 67, Rule ID: ADJECTIVE_IN_ATTRIBUTE[1]
Message: A more concise phrase may lose no meaning and sound more powerful.
Suggestion: smaller
...e author makes is that the children are smaller in height and thus would be difficult to identify...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, if, look, moreover, so, then, thus, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2213.0 2260.96107784 98% => OK
No of words: 448.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 4.93973214286 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60065326758 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6063085367 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.504464285714 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 694.8 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.6218966582 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.590909091 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.3636363636 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.13636363636 5.70786347227 55% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.108321515585 0.218282227539 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0374414133257 0.0743258471296 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0472999024701 0.0701772020484 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0589959189676 0.128457276422 46% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0531034749386 0.0628817314937 84% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.37 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.