"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 above argument states a recent problem of Central Plaza, and identifies skateboard users as the only one culpable for their misfortunes. But the above argument suffers from myopic logic and lacks suffient example to compel us to arrive to their conclusion.
The decrease in shoppers in plaza is a general trend of the modern world due to the advent of online shopping. Many people prefer to shop at the comfort of their home. Geographical location could be a factor as well, perhaps people who used to shop at that plaza has shifted their home at a different location, or perhaps a rival shop has opened nearby and has diverted all the customers. The point is possibilities are endless. The statement does not bother to look at other potential factors.
The argument above does not give sufficient evidence to link the increasing popularity of skateboard with the increasing number of skateboard users in the plaza. It could very well be the case that skateboard users obtain their gear somewhere else. The argument does not reference any skateboard shop or any similar location within the plaza, so why would skateboard users visit the plaza. The statement has to mention incentives for skateboard users to visit the plaza, and refer location where the skateboard users are visiting to make their above statement more understandable. Right now it is difficult find to the link between increasing popularity of skateboard to increasing presence of skateboard users within the plaza, which is clearly implied in the statement.
Littering and vandalisim could very well be a cause for decreasing shoppers in the central plaza. There are numerous possible factors that lead to increase in litter and vandalisim, perhaps the security guards and cleaners are not performing their duty as dilligently as they should, perhaps the neighbourhood had an advent of delinquents, which may or may not include skaters. However, there is not a single example given which could make one believe that only skaters are responsible for this.
Prohibiting skaters could lead to further decrease in shoppers in the plaza. Who knows, since skateboarding is the new trend and the argument seem to imply that there are a lot of skateboard users within the plaza, so baning them will definitely lead to further depreciation of customers according to their logic.
There are a lot of reasons for decreasing shopers in the plaza, the above statement does not even bother to rule out any other possibility except for blaming it harshly on skateboard users. And of course the statement does not provide sufficient evidence to prove that skaters are going to the shop in the first place let alone causing problems. So it is imprudent to blame the central plaza’s misfortune on skateboard users and believing that simply banning them will lead to a return of heydays.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 20 15
No. of Words: 470 350
No. of Characters: 2333 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.656 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.964 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.679 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 159 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.072 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.336 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.595 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 262, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ompel us to arrive to their conclusion. The decrease in shoppers in plaza is a g...
^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...er to look at other potential factors. The argument above does not give sufficient...
^^^
Line 6, column 493, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ly banning them will lead to a return of heydays.
^^
Line 6, column 504, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...them will lead to a return of heydays.
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, look, may, so, well, as to, except for, of course, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2383.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 470.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.07021276596 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.65612321451 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75297197323 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451063829787 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 749.7 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.0007258022 57.8364921388 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.15 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.5 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.7 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.273955021108 0.218282227539 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0951247187249 0.0743258471296 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0702567822941 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142684931011 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0270583137935 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: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.