The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety."
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 preceding statement, the author claims that the bicyclists lack the awareness for safety requirement other than helmets and the government needs to conduct the education program for informing the riders. The author bases his conclusion on the evidence that the bicyclists are trying more risky rides thinking they are wearing the helmets for their safety and are getting into more accidents than earlier. The author's intent is innocuous; However, the premises on which he bases his conclusion is ambiguous and needs to provide further elucidations to bridge the gap between the evidence and the conclusion.
The initial problem with the argument is the possible flaws in the data on which his assertion is standing. The data provided is just the percentage which provides only an approximal values for any statistics. It is entirely possible that the "200 percent increase" in accident, might have occured to bicyclists not wearing the helmets at all. If the number of riders decreased by tremendous amount in the ten-year period, then the percentage of accidents would exceed the earlier value even if the number of accidents remained the same. Furthermore, the increase in percentage of helmet wearers also does not provide infallible evidence for the conclusion for the same reason as earlier. Besides, the author has not guaranteed the reliability or accuracy of the data. The study was dispersed to ten years which might have encouraged the data collectors to be unfaithful. Unless the author accounts for the steadiness of the data and provides numbers instead of percentage, the argument will undermine itself.
Moreover, the unsubstantiated premise that the accidents are caused due to the risk taken by the bicyclists brings the argument further downwards. There is a complete possibility that the accidents occured are due to the mistakes of motor vehicles. I concede that the bicyclists have to be more careful in their rides, but if other vehicles are overtaking and crossing the line, then there is only little one can do. Furthermore, even if the accidents are due to unnecessary risks taken by the riders, we do not know that the bicyclists are necessarily telling the truths about wearing helmets. Maybe the bicyclists just bought the helmet because some traffic rule awareness program asked them to and then stopped wearing it after few days. The accidents might have occured on the day not wearing the helmets. If this is true, then the argument is likely to be weakned.
Finally, the argument contains various unwarranted assumptions and needs to answer a lot of questions. For instance, is the data provided is true for all the states? Is the data taken from proportional number of samples from places with higher and lower number of bicyclists? Is there any previous government ran program that had helped to mitigate these sorts of problems? Are the bicyclists likely to follow the educational programs provided for the safety measures? If the author does not have answers to these questions, then the argument is going down the drain.
Although the argument contains unjustified premises and reasonings, it does not necessarily mean that the author's intent is wrong and entire argument is fallible. If the author agrees to fix his flaws and provides the explanations for all the assumptions, then the argument could be accepted for further considerations.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 26 15
No. of Words: 549 350
No. of Characters: 2788 1500
No. of Different Words: 241 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.841 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.078 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.699 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 168 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 121 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.115 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.812 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.296 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...tween the evidence and the conclusion. The initial problem with the argument is th...
^^^
Line 2, column 108, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ata on which his assertion is standing. The data provided is just the percentage wh...
^^^
Line 2, column 183, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[2]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'value'?
Suggestion: value
...ntage which provides only an approximal values for any statistics. It is entirely poss...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, finally, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2853.0 2260.96107784 126% => OK
No of words: 549.0 441.139720559 124% => OK
Chars per words: 5.19672131148 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84053189512 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80790789864 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 250.0 204.123752495 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.455373406193 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 888.3 705.55239521 126% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.0360261335 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.730769231 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1153846154 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.53846153846 5.70786347227 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.152932022306 0.218282227539 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.042563582797 0.0743258471296 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0463808624161 0.0701772020484 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0802430107294 0.128457276422 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0491584254171 0.0628817314937 78% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 129.0 98.500998004 131% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.