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.
Since there has been complaints from residents for years about the river being noisome and recent surveys showed incline of the locals in favoring water sports, the author assertion that cleaning Mason River will bring more use of the river for water sports, and thus recommends the city government to assign more money for the task. While it may seem logical to concur that residents will choose not to pursuit their water activities in a filthy waters, the author’s conclusion relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence; therefore, the argument is flawed.
For a starter, the recent announcement of the state, in which it came as a late response to years of complaints, offering plans to clean up Mason River without elaborating on the logistics and ways of operation, does not hold water. What kind of technology will the state use to clean the water? How long will such operation take? And, how much budget and time will the state allocate for such plans. Will cleaning the river waters affect the residents of Mason City economically and environmentally? Has a similar process been done in other cities’ rivers or lakes? Moreover, after years of low maintenance and deterioration in quality of the river’s waters, are such plans applicable?
The data in which the author relies on is ambiguous, since there is no information about the percentage of residents who favor these kinds of water sports, nor the total percentage of residents who initially took the survey. It is highly difficult to generalize from the survey’s sample to the population of Macon City. Perhaps, only a total of 20% of the residents actually took the survey, which out of them only 5% stated they favor these kinds of water sports. That would mean the conclusion is based on misrepresentation and over generalization of the data given. Moreover, if the content of the survey has been perceived as discussing further solutions to the current issues in riverside recreational activities in Mason River, then the survey might be a prime for residents to think water sports are within their favorite activities.
Assuming the majority of the locals actually filled the survey, and most of those participants, ranked water sports as one of their favorite, is this ranking sufficient to actually want to practice those sports in Mason River? Without citing evidence in support of his this position, the author is in fact inaccurate to draw such statement. Residents of Macon City might prefer to swim in pools where they are less exposed to be swept away by the river stream. Also, we cant tell if the river has fish, so fishing in the river is not certain as well. These possibilities weaken the author’s assumption in the original argument.
In conclusion, the assertion as it currently stands is incredibly flawed, due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the questions above and offer more convincing evidence (perhaps in a form of a systematic study), then it would be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the conclusion that cleaning Mason River will lead to an increase of use of the river for water sports. Unless additional evidence is provided, the residents of Mason City for the argument should find it unconvincing.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 548 350
No. of Characters: 2666 1500
No. of Different Words: 262 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.838 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.865 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.679 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 175 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 100 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.909 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.164 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.501 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 448, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[2]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'water'?
Suggestion: water
...suit their water activities in a filthy waters, the author's conclusion relies on...
^^^^^^
Line 1, column 580, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...nce; therefore, the argument is flawed. For a starter, the recent announcement o...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 274, Rule ID: USE_TO_VERB[1]
Message: Did you mean 'used'?
Suggestion: used
... What kind of technology will the state use to clean the water? How long will such ...
^^^
Line 13, column 471, Rule ID: CANT[1]
Message: Did you mean 'can't' or 'cannot'?
Suggestion: can't; cannot
...wept away by the river stream. Also, we cant tell if the river has fish, so fishing ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, well, while, in conclusion, in fact, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 83.0 55.5748502994 149% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2771.0 2260.96107784 123% => OK
No of words: 548.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.05656934307 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.83832613839 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84321795269 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 268.0 204.123752495 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.489051094891 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 868.5 705.55239521 123% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 82.5643250357 57.8364921388 143% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.954545455 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.9090909091 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.81818181818 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.322921328181 0.218282227539 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0913391783709 0.0743258471296 123% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0796043199039 0.0701772020484 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.190154667392 0.128457276422 148% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0170222444927 0.0628817314937 27% => 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: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.83 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.