The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.
"In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend—the city-run public schools—comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do."
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.
The author of the letter believes that Parson City residents value good education in public schools more highly than Blue City residents. She belives this because although both cities allocate a proportion of its overall tax revenue to public school funding and that the two cities of equal populations, the absolute value spent on public schools for Parson City is nearly twice the amount of Blue City’s revenue spent. Although her argument may seem plausible, the assumptions she claimed is weakly correlated and built on a baseless foundation. Further evidence on the socio-economical standings, age distribution and of the two cities must be provided in order to evaluate the argument.
First of all, the claim is that because the population of the two cities are equal, the government would collect a similar amount of tax revenue. An assumption the author adopted is that the citizens of each city have the same average income. However, we are not given any background information about the socio-economical standings of the citizens of the two cities. Parson City may be an industrialised, IT oriented, metropolitan city with many high payed white collar workers, where as Blue City may be a countryside city oriented towards agriculture. If this is the case, it is natural that Parson City would generate more tax, thus spend more on public education even if the citizens of the two cities value public education equally. Some evidence of similar socio-economical standings of the two cities would have to be provided by the author to make her cause valid.
Building upon the implication of equal tax revenue, we do not know the demographics by age of the two cities. Although the two cities may have a similar population, if Parson City is a young city with a large labor force while Blue City is a retiring city with half of the citizens on retirement, it is natural that Blue City would only generate half the taxes of that of Parson City. The author can perhaps cite evidence from the government census to support her stance, otherwise we cannot effectively evaluate this claim.
Lastly, the citizens of Blue City may contribute more anonymous donations towards public schools and the citizens of Parson City. Although the author claims that the majority of the funds spent on school that student attend derives from tax, the donations may very well be anonymous and not listed upon the schools’ treasury documentations. Evidence regarding donations is needed to help evaluate the argument.
In conclusion, it may be true that Parson City residents place an higher emphasis on public education than Blue City residents, the author’s argument nevertheless hardly makes a cogent case. If we were to further evaluate this claim, the author will have to cite reliable evidence regarding the general socio-economical standings, population age distribution and donation tendencies of the two cities.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-11-02 | blenksprado | 89 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. it told that: the majority of money comes from taxes.
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flaws:
Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do.
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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: 18 15
No. of Words: 475 350
No. of Characters: 2387 1500
No. of Different Words: 197 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.668 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.025 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.773 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.389 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.139 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.399 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.16 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 553, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Further,
...ted and built on a baseless foundation. Further evidence on the socio-economical standi...
^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 443, Rule ID: MANY_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun high seems to be countable; consider using: 'many highs'.
Suggestion: many highs
...ed, IT oriented, metropolitan city with many high payed white collar workers, where as Bl...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 481, Rule ID: WHERE_AS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'whereas'?
Suggestion: whereas
...h many high payed white collar workers, where as Blue City may be a countryside city ori...
^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 64, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...e true that Parson City residents place an higher emphasis on public education tha...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, lastly, may, nevertheless, regarding, so, thus, well, while, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2460.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 475.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.17894736842 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66845742379 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.90319224437 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 204.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.429473684211 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 794.7 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.466777078 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.666666667 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.3888888889 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.27777777778 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => 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: 0.345988385957 0.218282227539 159% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.121080419113 0.0743258471296 163% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.102160154639 0.0701772020484 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.227757424172 0.128457276422 177% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0643443382957 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.06 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.18 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.