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 argument claims that, regular dental care is not helpful in preventing tooth decay. In order to support this they have given evidence that the children in nepal have lower levels of tooth decay though they receive little to no dental care. The argument is based on a lot of unstated assumptions which need to be checked in order to evaluate the logic of the argument.
Firstly, is the kind of food children eat in both countries similar? For example, it is possible that children in nepal eat healthy food and food that does not cause tooth decay much. Whereas, children in the united states might have a very unhealthy diet and that might be the cause for their relatively higher levels of tooth decay. The kind of food we eat has an effect of the levels of tooth decay. The comparison could be made only when the kind of food children in both countries eat are same. Or else the argument is not valid and it is faulty.
Secondly, is the survey representative? Was children of different age groups surveyed? For instance, it is possible that the children who were surveyed in nepal had lower levels of tooth decay and children who had high levels of tooth decay were not surveyed. And vice-versa, it is possible that the children surveyed in united states had high levels of tooth decay and the others who had low levels were not surveyed. If this is true, then the argument is faulty.
In addition to that, it is possible that in fact children in nepal did get professional health care. Maybe there were not any dental clinics setup in the mountain regions, but regular dental camps were setup often. Maybe the people who surveyed misinterpreted the lack of dental clinics to that fact that do not get any professional dental care. Maybe they did not take into account the dental camps that are usually setup in rural regions. If this is true, then the argument is not sound.
Thus the above stated assumptions have to be answered in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the argument. Until then, the claim that is stated in the argument is considered false.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 366 350
No. of Characters: 1664 1500
No. of Different Words: 142 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.374 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.546 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.329 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 102 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 70 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 53 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 16 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.102 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.342 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.143 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 134, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'clinics'' or 'clinic's'?
Suggestion: clinics'; clinic's
...h care. Maybe there were not any dental clinics setup in the mountain regions, but regu...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 347, 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.
...o not get any professional dental care. Maybe they did not take into account the dent...
^^^^^
Line 17, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
..., then the argument is not sound. Thus the above stated assumptions have to be...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, thus, whereas, for example, for instance, in addition, in fact, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1721.0 2260.96107784 76% => OK
No of words: 366.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.70218579235 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37391431897 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.40824483108 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 146.0 204.123752495 72% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.398907103825 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 524.7 705.55239521 74% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.4 1.59920159681 88% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 40.1294390951 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 81.9523809524 119.503703932 69% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.4285714286 23.324526521 75% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.14285714286 5.70786347227 108% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.221485010869 0.218282227539 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0649750888604 0.0743258471296 87% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0661329669831 0.0701772020484 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113970360961 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0598214729922 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.4 14.3799401198 65% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 71.14 48.3550499002 147% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 7.6 12.197005988 62% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 9.68 12.5979740519 77% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 6.9 8.32208582834 83% => OK
difficult_words: 56.0 98.500998004 57% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.