"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."
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 declares that the only cause for the diminishing business in central plaza is skateboarding and therefore suggests that skateboarding should be prohibited in the central plaza in order to bring back the business in its previous states. However, the argument fails to make connection between increased skateboarding activities and decreased in business activities. This shows that the argument is fundamentally flawed. Similarly, the author of the argument based his conclusion in several questionable assumptions which are likely to undermine the conclusion rather than to support it.
In the first place, the author assume that the sole reason for the low business activities is increased skateboarding, but the author does not provide the evidences to support why the skateboarding is responsible for the decreased business activities? The author completely neglected others potential causes for decline in business; may be the whole economy is going to the phase of economic recession. It is also possible that government might have increased taxes to the particular kind of business that people of central plaza were engaged to. So, without having knowledge of such possible cause, it is impossible to reach the conclusion as stated in the argument.
In the second place, another seriously flawed assumption in the argument is that the skateboarders were responsible for the litter and vandalism in central plaza. How can the author of this argument be sure that skateboarders were involved in such activities? A group of vandals from nearby place might have involved in such activities. Further, the author does not give evidences that support the increased amount of litter is due to skateboarder. It may be true that skateboarder might have dumped their remaining food and bottles of the beverage after use, but that does not necessarily requires banning them from skateboarding. Such problems are minor and easily manageable.
Finally, the authors assume that the business will come back in its previous state if skateboarders are banned for skateboarding in the plaza. But, it may be the case that a large proportion of the customer in the central plaza includes skateboarder. If it were true, then the business would not return to its earlier state; rather, it would go down. Thus, in summary, without further investigation on the possible alternative cause for the decline in business, it would be unwise to recommend prohibiting skateboarders in the central plaza.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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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: 18 15
No. of Words: 392 350
No. of Characters: 2059 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.45 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.253 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.977 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 153 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.502 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.11 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, similarly, so, then, therefore, thus, in summary, kind of, in the first place, in the second place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2103.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 392.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.36479591837 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44960558625 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0399162738 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.47193877551 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 662.4 705.55239521 94% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.7745959695 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.833333333 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7777777778 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.38888888889 5.70786347227 147% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.207140826582 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0690336209849 0.0743258471296 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673057294794 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.143282113157 0.128457276422 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0362129816959 0.0628817314937 58% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.81 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.14 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.