A recent study indicates that children living in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal have lower levels of tooth decay than children living in suburban areas in the United States, despite the fact that people in the Himalayan mountain region in Nepal receive little to no professional dental care, while people in suburban areas in the United States see a dentist an average of 1.25 times per year. Thus, regular dental care is not helpful in preventing tooth decay.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The study illustrates important results where children in the suburban United States have higher number incidents of tooth decay as compared to children at Himalayan mountain region. The study seems plausible to some extent but fails to answer some questions which could undermine it and must have been overlooked.
The primary factor is, availability of dental care in both places, being a mountain region there is almost no professional care in Himalayan regions, while suburban regions of America do have it in plenty. This makes it easier to identify how many children on average have tooth decay in the America as all children have adequate access to one dental clinic, albeit the Himalayan children who may be suffering from tooth decay may have never reached the clinics at all, thus giving such low numbers.
The next major factor which remains neglected - are all those children who are visiting dental clinics have tooth decay? The children who have easy access to dental care may simply be availing their facilities for regular check-ups, this may not guarantee that the children were having tooth decay. The children residing in the Himalayas may not be having the facilities at all so the average number of visits are bound to be lower. Therefore the average estimate made by the study fails to support the final judgment.
Finally, we need more information on the social economic and living conditions of the two places. Are the food-eating habits of the children the two places the same? Children who eat chocolates or soda often has higher risks of tooth decay. Does a child have enough economic support to visit dental clinics in the first place? For example, parents do not find it necessary to visit the dentists, simply because they find no harm in avoiding the visits as they any way drain their pockets. This puts a question is the medical facilities provided in the two regions equitable in terms of cost? Higher the dental expenses, lower would be the number of patient visits.
Therefore we cannot conclude the dental care has had no benefit to the children of suburban regions. Had the conditions been the same for children in both regions, the study would not have been unconscionable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
sample:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/recent-study-indic…
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1808 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.873 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.406 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 137 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 93 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 30 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.824 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.739 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.562 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
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.
...ne it and must have been overlooked. The primary factor is, availability of dent...
^^^
Line 5, column 300, 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.
...t the children were having tooth decay. The children residing in the Himalayas may ...
^^^
Line 5, column 434, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...number of visits are bound to be lower. Therefore the average estimate made by the study ...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...uld be the number of patient visits. Therefore we cannot conclude the dental care has ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, if, look, may, so, therefore, thus, while, for example, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 39.0 55.5748502994 70% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 16.3942115768 18% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1853.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 371.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.99460916442 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38877662729 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.47328628462 2.78398813304 89% => OK
Unique words: 187.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.504043126685 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 582.3 705.55239521 83% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.361055233 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.0 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.8235294118 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.58823529412 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.287083213408 0.218282227539 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0938558836561 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0836497315502 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.177450420837 0.128457276422 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0721251130503 0.0628817314937 115% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.66 12.5979740519 93% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 85.0 98.500998004 86% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => 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.