In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is therefore sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument.
Be sure to explain how the argument depends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In this survey author concludes that the city government should devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities. To support this conclusion the author cites following facts about the Mason City: (1) The Manson City residents rank waters sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. (2) The Manson city river flowing through the city is rarely used for these recreational activities. (3) Residents of Manson City have been complaining about the quality of river’s water and the river’s smell hence, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River.
This argument rests on a series of unsubstantial assumptions, and thus, not strong enough to lead to the author's conclusion.
Firstly, author cities surveys of city resident's and claims that city resident love water sports. However, the scope and validation of survey is not clear. For example, the survey could have asked people if they prefer using river for water sports or would like to see hydroelectric damn built, which might have tempted resident to choose, water sports as an option. Residents whose survey was taken might not represent whole city and are resident staying near river side. Survey could have been 10 pages long with only two questions on water sports. Unless the survey is fully representative, valid and reliable, it cannot be used to effectively support author’s assumption.
In addition, author assumes that residents currently do not use river water for swimming, boating and fishing because it is polluted and smelly. Although, it is mentioned that for years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of water it cannot be identified up to what level water was polluted. Hence, we cannot determine exact relationship between lack of river use and current state of the river. To strengthen his/her argument, the author would benefit from taking a predictable survey asking a wide range of residents that, why they currently do not use the river. Building upon this assumption, author concludes that cleaning up of river would increase use of river for water sports. Unless the reason behind not using river currently is known, one cannot come to this conclusion.
According to the author, reason behind not using river for sports currently is smell and polluted water. But reason for this smell and pollution is not stated. Smell might come from a natural phenomenon or bacteria that surrounds river also, there are some water bodies that emit a strong smell of Sulphur due to geographical location. If this is the reason, it cannot be solved by cleaning up the river. Regardless of whether river clean-up will solve the pollution and smell problem. Its impact on river usage is still unknown because author does not show effective connection between river usage and pollution.
In sum, the recommendation relies on certain doubtful assumptions. The argument, with such obvious loopholes and fallacies does not stand up to more careful scrutiny. Had the author supported his argument with by implementing more reliable surveys and finding out exact reason behind pollution and smelling of the river, as it would have helped in bolstering his conclusion. However, in the absence of this data, the argument is unsubstantiated and hence the author's stand is vindicated.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 538 350
No. of Characters: 2743 1500
No. of Different Words: 250 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.816 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.099 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.58 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 200 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 97 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.926 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.313 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.51 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 86, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
... government should devote more money in this years budget to riverside recreational ...
^^^^
Line 2, column 106, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... thus, not strong enough to lead to the authors conclusion. Firstly, author citie...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, so, still, then, thus, for example, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2834.0 2260.96107784 125% => OK
No of words: 537.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.27746741155 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81386128306 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71347529326 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 253.0 204.123752495 124% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.47113594041 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 858.6 705.55239521 122% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.6033474092 57.8364921388 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.962962963 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8888888889 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.48148148148 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.367015620608 0.218282227539 168% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110393199504 0.0743258471296 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.121880598532 0.0701772020484 174% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.183416379252 0.128457276422 143% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.17781485262 0.0628817314937 283% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.34 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.