A recently issued twenty-year study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia investigated the possible therapeutic effect of consuming salicylates. Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, food-processing companies also add salicylates to foods as preservatives. The twenty-year study found a correlation between the rise in the commercial use of salicylates and a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by study participants. At the time when the study concluded, food-processing companies had just discovered that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods, and, as a result, many companies plan to do so. Based on these study results, some health experts predict that residents of Mentia will suffer even fewer headaches in the future.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
Some health experts predict that Mentia residents will suffer even fewer headaches in the future by consuming salicylates based on the twenty-year study. However, there are some questions that need to be answered before we can conclude that the prediction of the health experts is sound.
First, the health experts base their prediction on the demographic participants in the twenty-year study. There are two questions needed to be answered before we can conclude the health experts’ prediction is tenable regarding this premise. The first question that needed to be answered is whether the demographics of the participants in the study and the Mentia residents are similar. If the participants are shown to be similar to the Mentia residents, then the health experts’ prediction is sound. However, if the demographics in the study and Mentia’s residents are vastly different, for example young people in the study but Mentia consists of elders, then this could weaken the claim that residents of Mentia will suffer less headaches due to increasing consumption of salicylates in the future.
The second question is based on their prediction on the validity of the twenty-year study. The health experts should ask themselves whether participants consistently report their headaches during the twenty-year period. If participants did, then this could strengthen the claim that consuming salicylates could be used for curing headaches. If not, then the one does not imply the other. However, twenty year is a very long time, so things could have changed. For instance, if people are less willing to report their headaches, then it is likely that there is a reduction of headaches (due to lower reports). Hence, this could weaken the claim that consuming salicylates could alleviate headaches.
Second, the health experts based their predictions of the efficacy of salicylates in treating headaches on the similarity with aspirin, which is a medicine for curing headaches. However, before the health experts make a prediction, they should ask themselves whether members of the same chemical family share the same effects or not. If the experts found solid evidence of the direct effectiveness of salicylates and headaches regardless of aspirin, then increasing the consumption of salicylates would lead to fewer headaches. Therefore, this could strengthen the health experts’ prediction.
Lastly, the health experts also draw their conclusion based on the correlation of the rise in the commercial use of salicylates and the reduction in headaches reported by the participants. It is necessary to ask two questions regarding the correlation. The first question that the experts should ask themselves is whether there are any other external factors that could have a significant impact on the number of reported headaches, such as stress level (since stress level could contribute to headaches). Therefore, if the experts could show that other external factors were held constant, then this could strengthen their claim that increasing salicylates in commercial use would reduce headaches.
Another question that needed to be answered is whether the participants in the study consume any medications that could alleviate headaches or not such as Paracetamol. If the participants took any drugs that are responsible for headaches, then this could weaken the health experts’ argument that increasing consumption of salicylates lead to lower number of reported headaches. If the experts show that there were no other factors that contribute to the reduction in headaches, then this would strengthen the claim that increased salicylates consumption in Mentia would lead to lower headaches on condition that participants did not take any medications that can reduce headaches.
In conclusion, before making the predictions about the health of Mentia residents, the health experts should consider several factors, such as demographics and time period of the twenty-year study, the effectiveness of the chemical family, other external factors, and used medicines, that might influence the accuracy of their predictions.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 632 350
No. of Characters: 3404 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.014 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.386 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.875 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 262 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 196 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 150 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 120 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.308 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.316 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.923 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.378 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.583 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.134 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 7 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 728, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun headaches is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...im that residents of Mentia will suffer less headaches due to increasing consumption...
^^^^
Line 9, column 277, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...the correlation. The first question that the experts should ask themselves is whe...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, however, if, lastly, regarding, second, so, then, therefore, for example, for instance, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 28.0 12.9520958084 216% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 23.0 13.6137724551 169% => OK
Pronoun: 46.0 28.8173652695 160% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 25.0 16.3942115768 152% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3502.0 2260.96107784 155% => OK
No of words: 632.0 441.139720559 143% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.54113924051 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.01394158123 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97670278894 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 208.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.329113924051 0.468620217663 70% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1044.9 705.55239521 148% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.6749266793 57.8364921388 129% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.692307692 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3076923077 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.19230769231 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 15.0 4.67664670659 321% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.238643703636 0.218282227539 109% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0838605491833 0.0743258471296 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0727227728074 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.145171824461 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0540943006659 0.0628817314937 86% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.8 14.3799401198 117% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.15 12.5979740519 120% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.4 8.32208582834 89% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
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.