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.
A Central Plaza store owner argues that his business has steadily declined over the past two years due to the increased popularity of skateboarding. The argument is not a solid one as the store owner makes several assumptions that requires further scrutiny. Furthermore, without additional evidence, his recommendation to the city for the prohibition of skateboarding may not bring the results favorable to the store owner.
The store owner assumes that consumers of skateboarding and shoppers of Central Plaza overlap in terms of their consumer profile. For instance, the owner assumes that most of his consumers have become interested in skateboarding over the past two years. However, his argument does not specify a typical consumer profile of the shoppers prior to the rise of skateboarding. Without this information, one cannot conclude that skateboarding has caused the decrease in the Central Plaza’s business. For instance, a typical age range of the plaza’s shoppers may have been from age of 10 to 80 whereas a typical age range of skateboarders is between age 10 and 30. If the populations do not overlap, it does not make sense to conclude that skateboarding has taken away the Central Plaza shoppers.
The store owner also believes that skateboarders have caused a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism in the plaza. There is not enough evidence that the litter and vandalism were the act of skateboarders. It could be the case that those who ruined the Central Plaza’s shopping experience were in fact the very shoppers whom the owner is trying to win back. Moreover, it could simply be a coincidence that the two events occurred at the same time. Therefore, owner must provide conclusive evidence that skateboarders caused the increase in litter and vandalism.
These were some of many unanswered questions that the store owners must address in order to bolster his recommendation to the city. It could be the case that skateboarders are not the same people who used to shop at Central Plaza. Furthermore, the store owner may be making a critical mistake in assuming that skateboarders have caused the litter and vandalism in the shopping area. Without clarifying these assumptions, his recommendation, as it stands currently, may not restore the number of shoppers back to the level where it was prior to the increased popularity of skateboarders.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 388 350
No. of Characters: 1961 1500
No. of Different Words: 164 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.438 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.054 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.944 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.556 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.867 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.364 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.547 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.076 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, therefore, whereas, for instance, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2024.0 2260.96107784 90% => OK
No of words: 388.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.21649484536 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43821085614 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.09282109084 2.78398813304 111% => OK
Unique words: 171.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.440721649485 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 639.9 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 28.6384982191 57.8364921388 50% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 112.444444444 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5555555556 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.11111111111 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.348307079344 0.218282227539 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.114235219123 0.0743258471296 154% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0756737374456 0.0701772020484 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.218907931523 0.128457276422 170% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.036212746674 0.0628817314937 58% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
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: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.