A recent survey of 250 adults between the ages of 30 and 45 showed an association between the number of hours adults spend online each day and self-reporting of symptoms commonly associated with depression. The survey found that adults who spend 30 hours

The author tries to draw a correlation between the increase in number of hours spent online by an adult of a specific age group increases the chances of them reporting symptoms commonly associated with depression. He bases his conclusion on a survey. On the first glance, the author's argument seems cogent, but on thorough scrutiny we notice that the argument fails to provide any supporting statistics or a good analogy to a similar observation. The argument is rife with fallacies. There are some serious questions that need to be answered before the argument is accepted.

First of all, the author states a direct cause-effect relation between the number of hours spent by an adult online to the symptoms of depression. There might be numerous other causes that are not taken into account before coming to such a conclusion. The scope of such assumptions cannot be well defined. For example, most of the adults of age 30-45 are office goers. They might be facing stress at work or might be anxious because of the traffic they face while going to and fro from work. The participants on the survey must be kept unaffected from external factors that might cause the results of the survey to be skewed.

Secondly, the author fails to provide statistics about the actual number of adults who took the survey actually felt symptoms of depression. Without providing the numbers making such a claim is a debacle. The number of such adults might be only 2 among 250 or 240 among the 250, but we cannot link the effect of online usage to the be the only cause depression.

Thirdly, the author fails to support his claims with any medical opinion. The adults who reported the common symptoms of depression might actually be wrongly diagnosing their issues to be symptoms of depression. Being "sad, down or blue" is a very weakly constructed argument to being equal to a person who is depressed. Also, there is no historical data about the sample set of adults, as to if they were already under the influence of depression. What kind of medication they take? Do they cause symptoms of depression? Have the adults in the region recently witnessed a depressing event such as, nations football team losing in the world cup or a recent act of terrorism in the city center? Though trivial, these skew the results in a much convoluted way.

Moreover, the type of questions asked in the survey also has an impact on the conclusion of the survey. The author must furnish the support his argument with the list of questions asked in the survey which led to him making this conclusion.

The author needs to work on providing more formidable base to buttress his argument. He must look keenly into the details that might deviate his conclusion even by the slightest degree. Only after providing answers to the above questions will the argument be acceptable. Without such a cause, as the argument is presented, it is unacceptable.

Votes
Average: 7.5 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 252, Rule ID: ON_FIRST_GLANCE[1]
Message: Did you mean 'at'?
Suggestion: At
...n. He bases his conclusion on a survey. On the first glance, the authors argument ...
^^
Line 1, column 277, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...n on a survey. On the first glance, the authors argument seems cogent, but on thorough ...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 329, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...nnot link the effect of online usage to the be the only cause depression. Thirdly, ...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 29, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ression. Thirdly, the author fails to support his claims with any medical opin...
^^

Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'also', 'but', 'first', 'if', 'look', 'moreover', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'third', 'thirdly', 'well', 'while', 'as to', 'for example', 'kind of', 'such as', 'first of all']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.24500907441 0.25644967241 96% => OK
Verbs: 0.156079854809 0.15541462614 100% => OK
Adjectives: 0.065335753176 0.0836205057962 78% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0453720508167 0.0520304965353 87% => OK
Pronouns: 0.032667876588 0.0272364105082 120% => OK
Prepositions: 0.128856624319 0.125424944231 103% => OK
Participles: 0.049001814882 0.0416121511921 118% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.64268348464 2.79052419416 95% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0344827586207 0.026700313972 129% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.13611615245 0.113004496875 120% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0235934664247 0.0255425247493 92% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.016333938294 0.0127820249294 128% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2931.0 2731.13054187 107% => OK
No of words: 500.0 446.07635468 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.862 6.12365571057 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72870804502 4.57801047555 103% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.358 0.378187486979 95% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.252 0.287650121315 88% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.178 0.208842608468 85% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.108 0.135150697306 80% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64268348464 2.79052419416 95% => OK
Unique words: 246.0 207.018472906 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.492 0.469332199767 105% => OK
Word variations: 57.5031002777 52.1807786196 110% => OK
How many sentences: 28.0 20.039408867 140% => OK
Sentence length: 17.8571428571 23.2022227129 77% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.6910096135 57.7814097925 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.678571429 141.986410481 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.8571428571 23.2022227129 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.678571428571 0.724660767414 94% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 43.0571428571 51.9672348444 83% => OK
Elegance: 1.80620155039 1.8405768891 98% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.456994908144 0.441005458295 104% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.097199554798 0.135418324435 72% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0811675689032 0.0829849096947 98% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.520742438288 0.58762219726 89% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.18626078002 0.147661913831 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.169641191741 0.193483328276 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.123715585149 0.0970749176394 127% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.497693731827 0.42659136922 117% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0652522635451 0.0774707102158 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.310058436662 0.312017818177 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0915601564435 0.0698173142475 131% => OK

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.33743842365 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 18.0 6.87684729064 262% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.82512315271 166% => OK
Positive topic words: 2.0 6.46551724138 31% => OK
Negative topic words: 12.0 5.36822660099 224% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 18.0 14.657635468 123% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.