The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument given brings out the fact that the business in Central Plaza are decreasing due to increasing of skateboarding in the Plaza. While this argument seems convincing on first glance, there are significant underlying flaws that raise doubt about the author’s conclusion.
The argument relies upon the assumption that skateboarding causes the decreasing of the business in Central Plaza but there is no evidence to prove the causality. This is a classic case of logical fallacy, named causal fallacy. Too many other factors may affect the reasoning as well. For example, other stores may have been arising during the years near the Central Plaza. These are offering discount about the products.
People are moving out of the place due to their needs. Shoppers are preferring other stores because of the quality of the products and variety of them. People are losing their jobs and it has been difficult to make money.
The claim about the increase of litter and vandalism around the Plaza is similarly unsubstantiated. It does not follow that these are why the business in the place are decreasing. It may exist many other factors as mentioned above or any other ones which explain the decreasing of their business.
Another mistake is to make a prediction that prohibiting skateboarding will bring the high level of the business. Skateboarding may not be the cause of the decreasing of the business. Furthermore, prohibiting it may not bring the business to its high level. There are probably other factors which can contribute to the decreasing.
For all of the above reasons, the writer of the letter about the store owner in Central Plaza has drawn a dubious conclusion. It may be likely that the prohibition of skateboarding in Central Plaza will return the high level of the business in Central Plaza, but to say it “cannot help but do so” is certainly fallacious, unless all of the questions raised above are untrue. Therefore, if the writer were to provide greater evidences, his argument would be more convincing.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
No. of Words: 337 350
More content wanted.
For issue essays, around 450 words, for argument essays, around 400 words.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 337 350
No. of Characters: 1657 1500
No. of Different Words: 163 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.285 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.917 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.666 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 109 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 84 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 59 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 38 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.85 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.876 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.579 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5