The following appeared in a memorandum written by the chairperson of the West Egg Town Council.
"Two years ago, consultants predicted that West Egg's landfill, which is used for garbage disposal, would be completely filled within five years. During the past two years, however, the town's residents have been recycling twice as much material as they did in previous years. Next month the amount of recycled material — which includes paper, plastic, and metal — should further increase, since charges for pickup of other household garbage will double. Furthermore, over 90 percent of the respondents to a recent survey said that they would do more recycling in the future. Because of our town's strong commitment to recycling, the available space in our landfill should last for considerably longer than predicted."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the given memorandum, the chairperson of the West Egg Council has stated that the landfill used by for garbage disposal will not be filled in next three years, as predicted by the consultants. He has arrived at this conclusion based on the town’s strong commitment to recycling of garbage. However, the argument is based on many unwarranted assumptions, which ought to be clarified by more evidences before analyzing its validity.
Firstly, the chairperson has not considered increase in garbage production in account of probable population growth in the town. It is obvious that the amount of domestic waste produced is directly proportional to the number of people. The chairperson has stated that the landfill site will not be full based on current population and their recycling incentive. It is possible that the town population is increasing and the consultants accounted for this while making the prediction. Even population boom is not impossible if the town is seeing good infrastructure development. Hence more evidence on the demographic status and population growth deems necessary before considering the validity of the argument.
Secondly, the chairperson has cited an outcome of recent survey where 90 percent of the respondents stated they would do more recycling. However, there is no details of the survey mentioned in the memorandum. Maybe the survey was conducted in a small part of the town where people might be positive towards recycling. It is also possible that the survey was carried out among very few percent of people, say 50 people in the town of 100000 people. In such scenario, the respondent may not accurately represent the sentiment of every people in the town regarding recycling and hence the argument is severely weekend. Therefore, more facts about the survey is necessary before referring to it as evidence to support the argument.
Furthermore, the chairperson has assumed that increase in pickup charges of other household garbage will promote recycling among the general populace. But people may have no problem with paying double charges. Recycling can be a tedious task and it is probable that people might have gotten faded up with it. If this is true, they would be more inclined to pay higher charges rather than continue recycling. It is also possible that due to popularity of recycling, the local retailers have increased the price of equipment required for recycling and therefore recycling might be more uneconomical. If this scenario holds merit, the basing the argument on the probable indisposition of people to pay double pickup charges does not hold water.
In epitome, the argument, as it stands, is seriously flawed. The author (the chairperson) needs to provide more evidences on the aforementioned subjects before the argument can be accurately evaluated based on the evidences mentioned in the memorandum.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 460 350
No. of Characters: 2366 1500
No. of Different Words: 213 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.631 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.143 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.823 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 186 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 110 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 75 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.756 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.318 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.318 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 578, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...seeing good infrastructure development. Hence more evidence on the demographic status...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 147, Rule ID: THERE_S_MANY[4]
Message: Did you mean 'there are no details'?
Suggestion: there are no details
... they would do more recycling. However, there is no details of the survey mentioned in the memorand...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 608, Rule ID: BEEN_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Consider using a past participle here: 'weekended'.
Suggestion: weekended
...ling and hence the argument is severely weekend. Therefore, more facts about the survey...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, therefore, while
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 : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2418.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.25652173913 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91869665607 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 221.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.480434782609 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 765.9 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 37.2353674588 57.8364921388 64% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.130434783 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.95652173913 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.155874451602 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0460325303962 0.0743258471296 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0738121345014 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.098741487327 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0809105761011 0.0628817314937 129% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.3 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.