In an attempt to improve highway safety, Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour on all county highways. But this effort has failed: the number of accidents has not decreased, and, based on reports by the highway patrol, many drivers are exceeding the speed limit. Prunty County should instead undertake the same kind of road improvement project that Butler County completed five years ago: increasing lane widths, resurfacing rough highways, and improving visibility at dangerous intersections. Today, major Butler County roads still have a 55 mph speed limit, yet there were 25 percent fewer reported accidents in Butler County this past year than there were five years ago.
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.
In the given memorandum, the author recommends that Prunty County should implement the same road improvement project that was done in Butler County in order to decrease the number of accidents. However, the argument is flawed for numerous following reasons, as it relies on unwarranted assumptions.
Firstly, the author hastily assumes that lowering highway speed limit last year was not successful by simply referring to the number of accidents and by using the vague term, “many drivers are exceeding the speed limit.” This is a weak and unsupported claim, as the argument does not demonstrate any clear evidence that the accidents happened at the same level of severity. Also, it was not provided that how much the “many” drivers--though we don’t know how significant the number is—are exceeding the speed limit. Therefore, it is possible that although the accidents are taking place at the same frequency, the severity may have mitigated with less casualty, and even though many drivers exceed the speed limit, it might be just moderate excess. If the argument showed that more detailed data of car accident and of the record of the drivers’ breech of speed limit, then it would be more convincing that the lowering highway speed limit was nothing but failure.
Secondly, the author assumes that the same kind of road improvement project that has been done in Butler County would surely work in Prunty County. However, the author provides no adequate evidence to substantiate this assumption that the same project would work in a different county in a different time. Even though the road improvement project might work in Prunty County, it is possible that the project might not turn out to be as efficient in Butler County. It is entirely possible, for example, that the roads in Prunty County are relatively new than those in Butler County so that they do not need any road refurbishment, which is the main part of the road improvement project. Or, it is also possible that the number of bicycle, which is the main cause of car accident, has increase over the past five years, and the road improvement project five years ago would not be effective anymore in Prunty County. Had the argument provided information regarding the similarities and differences of the road condition and other factors affecting traffic of Butler County and Prunty County, the argument would have been more convincing.
Lastly, even if the assumptions above are somehow guaranteed to be true, the author hastily assumes that the 25 percent decrease of the accident in Butler County surely means the effectiveness of the road improvement project. However, common sense tells us that simply knowing a decrease rate does not provide much information about the situation. Although 25 percent decrease might mean the significantly lower accident incidents among other counties, it is also possible that the actual accident number of Butler County is still higher than that of Prunty County even after 25 percent decrease. Without corroborating the argument with the relevant data that compares the exact number and severity of car accidents in Prunty County and Butler County, the argument would not be persuasive.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and therefore it is dubious. In order to evaluate the value of the decision, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK. In GRE/GMAT, we have to accept all data or evidence are true. So when there are percentages, we can't cast doubt on the 'percentages'. We need to always consider the 'percentages' as 100% or as much as possible.
There are two flaws:
1. 'Prunty County last year lowered its speed limit from 55 to 45 miles per hour', since it is from 'last year', it may take time for all people to understand
2. It is entirely possible that the lower speed limit does in fact serve to reduce the accident rate, while some other factors, such as unseasonably poor weather, reduced law enforcement measures, or even an influx of teenage drivers to the area, have served to increase the accident rate.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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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: 19 15
No. of Words: 559 350
No. of Characters: 2791 1500
No. of Different Words: 224 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.862 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.993 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.605 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 148 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.074 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.374 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.598 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.143 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'regarding', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'then', 'therefore', 'for example', 'in conclusion', 'kind of']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.2736 0.25644967241 107% => OK
Verbs: 0.1408 0.15541462614 91% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0896 0.0836205057962 107% => OK
Adverbs: 0.064 0.0520304965353 123% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0224 0.0272364105082 82% => OK
Prepositions: 0.1296 0.125424944231 103% => OK
Participles: 0.0384 0.0416121511921 92% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.80308568338 2.79052419416 100% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0112 0.026700313972 42% => Some infinitives wanted.
Particles: 0.0016 0.001811407834 88% => OK
Determiners: 0.1104 0.113004496875 98% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0192 0.0255425247493 75% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0112 0.0127820249294 88% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3453.0 2731.13054187 126% => OK
No of words: 556.0 446.07635468 125% => OK
Chars per words: 6.21043165468 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85588840946 4.57801047555 106% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.39928057554 0.378187486979 106% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.289568345324 0.287650121315 101% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.226618705036 0.208842608468 109% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.129496402878 0.135150697306 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80308568338 2.79052419416 100% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 207.018472906 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.426258992806 0.469332199767 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 49.9469516169 52.1807786196 96% => OK
How many sentences: 18.0 20.039408867 90% => OK
Sentence length: 30.8888888889 23.2022227129 133% => OK
Sentence length SD: 66.1126050251 57.7814097925 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 191.833333333 141.986410481 135% => OK
Words per sentence: 30.8888888889 23.2022227129 133% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.0 0.724660767414 138% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 59.8457234213 51.9672348444 115% => OK
Elegance: 1.94366197183 1.8405768891 106% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.33915454394 0.441005458295 77% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.187428352069 0.135418324435 138% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0949164198287 0.0829849096947 114% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.684904088776 0.58762219726 117% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.119027963777 0.147661913831 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.169890504494 0.193483328276 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0620400520089 0.0970749176394 64% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.471572814137 0.42659136922 111% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.1181387075 0.0774707102158 152% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.241295920145 0.312017818177 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0312677488101 0.0698173142475 45% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.33743842365 96% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.87684729064 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.82512315271 21% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 7.0 6.46551724138 108% => OK
Negative topic words: 9.0 5.36822660099 168% => OK
Neutral topic words: 1.0 2.82389162562 35% => OK
Total topic words: 17.0 14.657635468 116% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.