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 bicycle-related accidents 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, to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents, the government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety and less on encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets."
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.
In the newletter, the author claimed that while the percentage of bicyclist wearing helmets increased over the past ten years, the amount of bicycle-related accidents also increased, so the government should focus more on educating the bicyclists instead of requiring them to wear the helmets. This argument depends on some assumptions that need to be clarified.
First of all, the author seems to imply that the increasing number of bicycle-related accidents is problematic. While the amount of accidents matters, it is worth noting that if the amount of bicyclists increased over the past ten years, it seems unsurprising that the amount of bicycle-related accidents would also increase. The assumption that the number of bicycle-related accidents is problematic requires more information to be verified. Moreover, the author also contribute the faults of the accidents to the bicyclists. While bicycles are involved in the accidents, the bicyclists may not be the ones who cause the accidents. For instance, if the amount of automobiles increases greatly and overloaded the roads, or if the government designs the road signs terribly, the bicyclists are more likely to encounter the accidents, but they are not the ones to be blamed. The author should clarify why the rising number of bicycle-related accidents are caused by the bicyclists; otherwise it would be unclear why the government should focus on educating the bicyclists instead of improving the road signs to prevent accidents.
In addition, the author assumed that the amount of accidents is directly correlated to serious injuries, and this is a is poorly supported assumption. For example, by wearing the helments, the bicyclists are less likely to be severely injured or to be killed. If the causalties per accidents decrease after bicyclists start wearing helmets, the author's argument would be problematic in that it wrongly claimed that the helmets are not effective. The author should either focus on the casualties of the accidents instead of the number of accidents, or show that the aforementioned assumption, which is unlikely to be true, is correct.
Finally, by recommending that the government should focus less on requiring the bicyclists to wear helmets, the author assumed that the bicyclists would not stop wearing helmets even if the government no longer requires it. This assumption may be erroneous. If the bicylists stop wearing helmets, the bicycle-related accidents are more likely to cause casualties, which is exactly the opposite of what the author tried to achieve.
To conclude, the author should clarify the assumptions above to strengthen the arguments.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 415 350
No. of Characters: 2189 1500
No. of Different Words: 154 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.513 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.275 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.023 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.272 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.403 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.586 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.097 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 118, 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
...elated to serious injuries, and this is a is poorly supported assumption. For exa...
^
Line 5, column 346, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...r bicyclists start wearing helmets, the authors argument would be problematic in that i...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, if, may, moreover, so, then, while, for example, for instance, in addition, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2247.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 415.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.41445783133 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51348521516 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.11829387865 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 160.0 204.123752495 78% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.385542168675 0.468620217663 82% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 687.6 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 71.2427013199 57.8364921388 123% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.176470588 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4117647059 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.76470588235 5.70786347227 119% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.155402119689 0.218282227539 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0577884919494 0.0743258471296 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0566825779638 0.0701772020484 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.101495245894 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0611413390099 0.0628817314937 97% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.33 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.