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.
This argument asserts that people who live slow life in small towns have better health and higher longevity than those who live in big cities by comparing residents of Leeville(town) and Masonton(city). However, the argument is tenuose in that it depends on several invalid assumptions and there exist alternative explanations that contradicts the assertion.
First, the argument assumes that fewer sick leaves represent the better health status of people. However, what if people in Leeville are more reluctant to take a break, even though they are sick? It is possible that there are fewer people in Leeville than in Masonton so that one person's absence might have more critical impact than Masonton's person do, which lead people feel sorry to leave their work even though they are sick. In addition, the companies in Manston might more care about their employees' welfare than Leeville's do, so that the employers are more generous about sick leaves, which lead them more sick leaves.
Moreover, more number of physicians does not necessarily means worse health of people. The hospitals of Masonton might cover bigger range of sickness than that of Leeville because Mansonton might need to deal with diverse diseases corresponding to the huge population of the city, so that they need to hire more physicians to cover the diversity. Alternatively, there might be many job offers for physicians in Mansonton as the city hospitals are financially more abundant than the small scale of hospitals in the town. Higher salary could be another variable that might attract the higher number of physicians in Mansonton than in Leeville.
Third, the comparison of average age of residents in two cities does not indicate any clue of their general longevity. The fact that there are more elderly people in Leeville than in Mansonton does not necessarily means that people in Leeville live longer than those of Mansonton. What if young people of Maonton would live longer than the elderly people of Leeville would? This is more convincing as residents of Masonton are likely to have better chances to take care of their health due to enough number of physicians, while in Leeville, one physicians should care about one thousands residents, which seems too burdensome.
In conclusion, the argument of the passage is tenuous owing to the flaws of the assumptions mentioned above. It fails to provide enough supports and evidence that can back up the better health and greater longevity in small towns than in big cities. Additional information and data such as longevity of the residents or health reports of the people should be considered in order to corroborate this argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 435 350
No. of Characters: 2194 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.567 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.044 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.566 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 159 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.588 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.185 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.366 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.607 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.126 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 58, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'does' requires base form of the verb: 'mean'
Suggestion: mean
...mber of physicians does not necessarily means worse health of people. The hospitals o...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 214, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'does' requires base form of the verb: 'mean'
Suggestion: mean
... than in Mansonton does not necessarily means that people in Leeville live longer tha...
^^^^^
Line 4, column 541, Rule ID: ONE_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use the numeral 'one' with plural words. Did you mean 'one physician', 'a physician', or simply 'physicians'?
Suggestion: one physician; a physician; physicians
...umber of physicians, while in Leeville, one physicians should care about one thousands residen...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 574, Rule ID: A_HUNDREDS[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. Consider using: 'one thousand'
Suggestion: one thousand
...ville, one physicians should care about one thousands residents, which seems too burdensome. ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, moreover, so, third, while, in addition, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2234.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 435.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13563218391 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56690854021 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62502565276 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.462068965517 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 702.9 705.55239521 100% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.5074833756 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.411764706 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.5882352941 23.324526521 110% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.88235294118 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.224270069569 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0783872180966 0.0743258471296 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0784015963742 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.135929875695 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0517897814798 0.0628817314937 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.83 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.36 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.