There is now evidence that the relaxed pace of life in small towns promotes better health and greater longevity than does the hectic pace of life in big cities. Businesses in the small town of Leeville report fewer days of sick leave taken by individual workers than do businesses in the nearby large city of Masonton. Furthermore, Leeville has only one physician for its one thousand residents, but in Masonton the proportion of physicians to residents is five times as high. Finally, the average age of Leeville residents is significantly higher than that of Masonton residents. These findings suggest that the relaxed pace of life in Leeville allows residents to live longer, healthier lives.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
In this statement, the author argued that the relaxed pace of life in small towns outperformed hectic lifestyle in big cities regarding to people’s health and longevity. In order to support his point of view, the autor enumerated three facts, in which workers’ days of sick leave, numbers of physicians per capita, and residents’ average age are compared between a small town Leeville and its nearby large city Masonton. With a quick glance, it seems that the authors’ claim is finely supported. However, after a careful scrutiny, I have to argue that there are other possible explanations towards those phenomena which strongly weaken the author’s claim.
First of all, the author put forward the fact that there are fewer individual workers’ days of sick leave in a small town, and argued it is healthier to live a relaxed pace in a small town. However, worker’ days of sick leave do not necessarily equal the day they actually get sick. For example, another possible explanation might be that people in a small town hold a totally different attitude toward illness comparing to people in a big city. Small town residents might still be willing to work even when they are sick, as long as they are capable of doing so. On the contrary, citizens in the city might treat illness much more seriously and will take a sick day however mild it is. If this alternative explanation turns out to be true, the author’s claim will undoubtedly become unwarranted.
Another fact the author used to support his claim is that the number of physicians per capita is five times more in the city comparing to that in a small town. His logic here is that these numbers indicates that people in the city need more physicians to fulfill their needs, which farther shows that people in the city are more easily to get sick, thus being unhealthy. However, another possible explanation which would totally destroy this induction is that maybe it is because that there are just more and better medical resources in the city comparing to that in a small town. Since cities are the centers of economics and are more developed than small towns, this uneven resource distribution is understandable. Following this possible explanation, this idea that more physicians per capita means more illness can hardly hold true.
In addition to that, in the third fact, the author tried to use the higher average age of this small town to demonstrate that people in the countryside enjoy longevity comparing to people with a hectic life pace in big cities. I have to argue that this is still not the only explanation. Since the elders are more tend to live in a quieter environment, it is possible they would choose to move into a small town, even though they had spent their youth in a big city. Besides, young people also tend to live in a big city since there are much more job opportunities. Since this possible explanation exists, we can not hastily jump to the conclusion that people in small towns enjoy a longer life expectation than people in big cities considering only their average ages.
To put it together, since there are possible alternative explanations to the author’s proposed facts, it is not reasonable nor warranted for us to jump to the conclusion that people in a small town do enjoy a healthier life comparing to people in a hectic lifestyle in a big city.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 578 350
No. of Characters: 2709 1500
No. of Different Words: 233 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.903 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.687 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.51 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.524 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.326 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.362 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, besides, but, first, however, if, may, regarding, so, still, third, thus, for example, in addition, first of all, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 24.0 13.6137724551 176% => OK
Pronoun: 53.0 28.8173652695 184% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 80.0 55.5748502994 144% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2826.0 2260.96107784 125% => OK
No of words: 578.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 4.8892733564 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90322654589 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75353399286 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 243.0 204.123752495 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.420415224913 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 897.3 705.55239521 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 13.0 4.22255489022 308% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.9473527576 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.571428571 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.5238095238 23.324526521 118% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.90476190476 5.70786347227 121% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.272807139419 0.218282227539 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0952803723314 0.0743258471296 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0946378959861 0.0701772020484 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.168609274817 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0562078292676 0.0628817314937 89% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.4 14.3799401198 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.38 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.57 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.