to get a better sense of the recreational needs of the community, the teeburg town Board sent a questionnaire addressed to the “head of household” in every home in the town. the board asked a series of questions designed to zero in on residents’ recreational preferences, in hopes of finding three they might fund in the upcoming year. the board was gratified to get a reasonable return rate of nearly 40 percent of all questionnaires. Based on that response, the board recommended that the following top vote getters be added to the town budget: a snowmobile trail, a skeet-shooting range, and a putting green.
Critique the reasoning used in the argument presented above by examining the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument and explaining the implications for the conclusion if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
While the argument in this passage seems logical on the surface, it has numerous flaws that prevents the outcome from being the best one possible. Among other things, the town Board needs to increase the number of responses, be more inclusive and the passage needs to include more details about the questionnaire itself in order to make a recommendation on the basis of the responses it receives.
The first flaw in the argument if that the questionnaire was addressed to the “head of household”. This excludes feedback from the individual family members in the household. Even if the questionnaire is shared with the members of the household, not everyone in the household would have the same recreational preference, making it hard to answer a single questionnaire. In addition to this, it may be hard for young children and other dependents to take part in such a questionnaire. Furthermore, the town Board is making an assumption that each home in the town is a small nuclear family. This would exclude tenants who are paying rent or visitors to the town who are living there for an extended period of time as they will not be the “owner” of the household but could frequent the recreation centre, limiting participation.
Secondly, 40% is not a very high response rate. Besides, we do not know which 40% of the community responded to the questionnaire. It is highly unlikely that everyone in Teeburg uses the recreational facilities in the town. What is the 40% that do not frequently use the facilities responded to the questionnaire? This would mean that the response received does not cater to the group of townspeople who do use the facilities frequently. The argument could be strengthened by either increasing the response rate by incentivising the responses or by handing out the questionnaire at the recreational facilities. This way, people who do actively engage with it receive the questionnaire.
Lastly, we do not know the structure of the questionnaire. From the passage, the questionnaire seems to have be structured so that people can vote for their top three preferred activities. However, if the facilities available are a bit rundown and not properly maintained, users might prefer the town Board budget to maintain the facility rather than to introduce new recreational activities. But we cannot get this information from this passage, which can be rectified by having a detailed understanding of the questionnaire being sent to people. In addition to this, even if there is a budget that the town can spend on improving recreational facilities, there is not statistics and information about how much is available. Can the top three recreational activities be covered by the budget? Are they all extremely expensive activities or is there enough money to fund all three?
In conclusion, there is not enough information presented to us in this passage to agree or disagree with the recommendation. In addition to this, the town needs to employ a different way to engage with the community and get more reliable feedback and information.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 505 350
No. of Characters: 2501 1500
No. of Different Words: 219 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.74 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.952 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.029 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 77 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.042 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.904 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.302 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 709, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
...wn who are living there for an extended period of time as they will not be the 'owner&apo...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 110, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'been'.
Suggestion: been
...assage, the questionnaire seems to have be structured so that people can vote for ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
besides, but, first, furthermore, however, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, in addition, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2587.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 505.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12277227723 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74048574033 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.21894938354 2.78398813304 116% => OK
Unique words: 232.0 204.123752495 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459405940594 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 805.5 705.55239521 114% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.1218190062 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.791666667 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0416666667 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.04166666667 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 4.67664670659 235% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.218026621282 0.218282227539 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0609668984537 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0769949811733 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.115212492004 0.128457276422 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0821897142352 0.0628817314937 131% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.18 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.