Hospital statistics regarding people who go to the emergency room after roller-skating accidents indicate the need for more protective equipment. Within that group of people, 75 percent of those who had accidents in streets or parking lots had not been wearing any protective clothing (helmets, knee pads, etc.) or any light-reflecting material (clip-on lights, glow-in-the-dark wrist pads, etc.). Clearly, the statistics indicate that by investing in high-quality protective gear and reflective equipment, roller skaters will greatly reduce their risk of being severely injured in an accident.
Write a response in which you examine the unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
While in general, statistics support the need for protective equipment in various sports including but not limited to roller-skating, there are flaws in how it is being presented here. The passage states that 75% of people involved in these accidents were not wearing and physical protection, this is simply a correlation. This is not to imply that this statistic doesn’t matter, but the reality is that it alone can not tell an entire story. The nature of the injuries faced by the 75% is not explained in detail, meaning that it is not outside the realm of possibility that protective equipment would not have helped very much at all. In order to strengthen this argument, those conducting the study must determine how many of the injuries were preventable by wearing protective or light reflecting equipment, since some of the injuries are likely to be due to recklessness. For example, standard protective equipment such as a helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads, will not protect the rider if he or she insists on attempting to jump down an outside flight of stairs and breaks their tibia. However, if the rider were not wearing protective equipment, they would still be included in the statistic, making it misleading.
At the current state of the passage’s argument, the 75% statistic simply shows one commonality between three quarters of roller-skating accidents. In order to make that number realistically mean anything, one would have to compare the rate of injury in a group with protective equipment to that without protective equipment, and the study would have to be a “field study” of sorts, in order to emulate a real life environment. Without this comparison, one may draw meaningless comparisons with no inhibition.
To summarize, the last sentence in the passage is mainly vulnerable to the criticism that it assumes that the correlation implies that more protective equipment will help solve the problem. The correlation does not imply this, it simply states that three quarters of skating accidents occur when people do not wear protective equipment. In fact, there are cases that would do well to entirely refute that assumption. Professional American football, for example, is controversial due to the amount of cranial trauma that the players suffer. Professional players often suffer from their careers decades after they retire, as a result of both large and small collisions with one another causing damage to their brain. Additionally, American football players wear extensive protective equipment, including shoulder pads, knee pads, elbow pads, mouthguards, and helmets, meant to protect their heads. Rugby, which is similarly a physically aggressive sport, has players not bolstered by nearly as much equipment as American football, yet the controversy and occurrence of injury is lower. Some hypothesize that the protective equipment is ironically the reason for the increased injury in American football. Proponents of this idea claim that protective equipment gives people a false sense of invincibility, causing them to act on more reckless behaviors with the belief that their equipment will save them. The football and rugby example provided above would help to support that claim. If this hypothesis holds true, then it can likely be extrapolated to other sports, including roller-skating. In that case, certain people wearing protective equipment would feel it is safe to perform reckless stunts, whereas those same people might be more reluctant to do so if they appreciated the danger of the situation.
In conclusion, while the hospital statistics can play an important role in the narrative, it simply isn’t capable of telling the entire story, much less suggesting a solution. However, the passage took that one small piece of the data, and used that to create multiple assumptions, and went as far as claiming a solution to the problem. Even if the argument and solution proposed in the passage were correct, it is intellectually dishonest to create said argument given the small amount of information available.
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: 25 15
No. of Words: 651 350
No. of Characters: 3325 1500
No. of Different Words: 305 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.051 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.108 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.815 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 238 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 191 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 138 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 102 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.04 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.884 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.56 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.279 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.388 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 824, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ve or light reflecting equipment, since some of the injuries are likely to be due to reckle...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 363, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...uipment, and the study would have to be a 'field study' of sorts, in or...
^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, similarly, so, still, then, well, whereas, while, for example, in conclusion, in fact, in general, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 23.0 13.6137724551 169% => OK
Pronoun: 54.0 28.8173652695 187% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 83.0 55.5748502994 149% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3442.0 2260.96107784 152% => OK
No of words: 649.0 441.139720559 147% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.30354391371 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.04732388556 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95988422454 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 313.0 204.123752495 153% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.482280431433 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 1063.8 705.55239521 151% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 11.0 4.22255489022 261% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.2412738692 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 137.68 119.503703932 115% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.96 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.68 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.145883995775 0.218282227539 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0421145265277 0.0743258471296 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0359136357451 0.0701772020484 51% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0843853223868 0.128457276422 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0414735845932 0.0628817314937 66% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.5 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.76 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.6 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 153.0 98.500998004 155% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.