In the last year’s mayoral election in Town T, candidate Miller led candidate Keating by a substantial margin in the polls leading up to the election. At the last minute, candidate Keating launched a widely viewed series of television advertisements that focused on preserving the natural environment of Town T, a topic neglected by candidate Miller. Subsequently, candidate Keating won the election by a narrow margin. This year, if candidate Miller hopes to win the upcoming mayoral election, he must increase his coverage of the topic of preserving the natural environment of Town T.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The prompt above describes a mayoral election between Miller and Keating that Miller lost soon after a particular TV ad was run. From this, the author derives a conclusion about what Miller should do to win the election this year. In coming to this conclusion, the author makes a number of unfounded assumptions that undermine the validity of the argument. These assumptions are based on faulty comparisons— between candidates, topical issues, and other contextual elements—and a mistaking of correlation for causation. If the author wants to support his conclusion, he would need to provide evidence proving that these two elections are comparable, and that Miller’s loss can factually be attributed to its implied cause.
The first error made by the author is in implying that just because an issue was topically relevant during one election, it will necessarily be relevant during the next election. For all we know, the natural environment could have been a major issue in the previous election because of some climatic issue, such as saving a particular waterway or passing a specific law to protect local wetlands, that has since been resolved (during Keating’s mayoralty, for example, which would make logical sense given that he ran on a preservationist platform). If the author wants to make this connection, he would need to provide evidence that the natural environment remains a hot-button issue that could decide the election one way or another.
The next faulty assumption in the argument also involves a comparison, namely between Miller and whoever his opponent is. The prompt seems to imply that Miller will be going up against Keating again, but there’s no evidence to support this. This matters, because if Miller is running against a different candidate, then there’s no reason to believe a strategy that would have served him well against Keating would still be useful. For example, he could be running against a park ranger, who will always be able to beat him on issues relevant to the natural environment, in which case increasing his coverage of those issues would be a waste of time. To fix this assumption, the author would need to tell us definitively that Miller is running against Keating again (or a very similar candidate).
Another major assumption the argument makes is in deciding that the television ads Keating ran were the sole or even primary reason that Miller lost the first election. This is a causation/correlation error, in that we have no reason to believe the two things didn’t simply happen separately, rather than one causing the other. It’s just as likely that Miller committed some terrible faux pas near the end of the election, and that turned out to be more of a deciding factor than the television ads. The author needs to provide evidence that the primary impetus behind so many people changing their vote between the time of the polling showing Miller in the lead and Keating’s win was the television ads. It’s certainly plausible that Miller might fare better in the next election if he pays attention to a subject he is said to have neglected. However, we cannot know that for certain unless the author provides definitive evidence that the issue of environmental preservation is still in the forefront of constituents’ minds, that Miller and Keating are the two candidates in the next election, and that the television ads and the issue they underscored were the primary reason Miller lost his lead in the previous election.
With this information in place, the author’s conclusion becomes not just plausible, but convincing.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-08-03 | Thelmacakes | 68 | view |
| 2022-02-19 | SP30 | 77 | view |
| 2020-04-26 | shubhamaggarwal | 83 | view |
| 2019-12-02 | farhadmoqimi | 27 | view |
| 2019-10-12 | kunalnate | 73 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 594 350
No. of Characters: 2932 1500
No. of Different Words: 266 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.937 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.936 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.61 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 224 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 167 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 63 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.038 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.343 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.182 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, however, if, may, so, still, then, well, as to, for example, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 26.0 13.6137724551 191% => OK
Pronoun: 55.0 28.8173652695 191% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => 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: 3048.0 2260.96107784 135% => OK
No of words: 591.0 441.139720559 134% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15736040609 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.93056706295 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.93896598807 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 279.0 204.123752495 137% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.472081218274 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 954.9 705.55239521 135% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 74.2694250685 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 152.4 119.503703932 128% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.55 23.324526521 127% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.8 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 1.0 5.15768463074 19% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
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: 0.174976832785 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0597178392552 0.0743258471296 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0481960721159 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.174976832785 0.128457276422 136% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0628817314937 0% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.6 14.3799401198 122% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.24 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.36 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Minimum four paragraphs wanted.
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.