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.

Essay topics:

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 has just discovered that salicylates can also be used as flavour additives for foods, and, as a result, many companies plan to do so. Based on these study results, some health experts predicts 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.

The above article introduces the usefulness of salicylates in dealing with headaches and its wild presence in foods production. Therefore, the food-processing companies’ inclination to use salicylates as flavour additives makes health experts conclude that residents in Mentia would suffer less headaches in the future. However, this conclusion is subject to the answer of three staple questions. Namely, the reliability of previous study, the causality between salicylates intake and headache reduction, and the mechanism of salicylates.

The first question needs to be asked is that whether the conclusion drawn from the twenty-year study is reliable. There are two issues remaining to be dubious about that study. First and foremost, it is unknown that whether the participants of the previous study can be representative of the whole population in Mentia. A negative answer to that question implies that the study can be biased. For example, if people suffering from serious headaches are more inclined to participate the study, then the extent of headaches in Mentia can be largely exaggerated. The second issue about that study is that the level of headaches reported by participants can be ambiguous. Without explicit standard of various levels of headaches, people’s description can be considerably subjective, and therefore the data gathered from this process can be chaotic.

The second question should be asked is whether it is the use of salicylates directly causes the reduce of headaches or is there any other elements confound this process. Since the study only manages to show a negative correlation between the use of salicylates and the level of headaches, this can be merely a coincidence. There might be other elements during that period of twenty years that leads to the reduction of headaches. The improvement of medical techniques, for instance.

The last question needs to address is the mechanism behind salicylates. The above report fails to show that the effect of salicylates is additive, which means the effect of salicylates will growth

with the quantity used without a limit. However, it is probable that further use of salicylates becomes useless up to a certain quantity. In this case, the increasing use of salicylates as foods flavour additives will not further help reduce the level of headaches.

In conclusion, this essay has argued that three questions need to be addressed before the conclusion of headache levels will be further reduced can be drawn. Experts should first scrutinise the validity of the twenty-year study to make sure participants are representative, and the headache reporting system is accurate. Then, they should legitimate the transition from correlation to causation between the increasing use of salicylates and the reduction of headaches. Lastly, they need to look into the mechanism of salicylates to make sure its effect is additive.

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Average: 4.2 (3 votes)
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Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 296, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun headaches is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...e that residents in Mentia would suffer less headaches in the future. However, this ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 93, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
... the use of salicylates directly causes the reduce of headaches or is there any other elem...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 73, 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.
...ss is the mechanism behind salicylates. The above report fails to show that the eff...
^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: With
...the effect of salicylates will growth with the quantity used without a limit. Howe...
^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, lastly, look, second, then, therefore, for example, for instance, in conclusion

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 30.0 19.6327345309 153% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2467.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 454.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.43392070485 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61598047577 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0664590377 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.449339207048 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 783.9 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 40.3827622362 57.8364921388 70% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.260869565 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7391304348 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.30434782609 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.223200610865 0.218282227539 102% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0732037992335 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0394812119717 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.130522929269 0.128457276422 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.021269061817 0.0628817314937 34% => 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: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.21 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.68 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 118.0 98.500998004 120% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 454 350
No. of Characters: 2399 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.616 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.284 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.923 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 78 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.917 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.096 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.583 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5