The following appeared as a recommendation by a committee planning a ten-year budget for the city of Calatrava.
"The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago. Thus the number of students enrolled in our public schools will soon decrease dramatically, and we can safely reduce the funds budgeted for education during the next decade. At the same time, we can reduce funding for athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities. As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to increase."
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.
The author of the argument avers concerns regarding presumable decline of birthrate and suggests cutting of funds initially accrued for education and recreational facilities for kids in favor of that of adults. Though the goal of such a recommendation is perceived as benevolent at first glance, further scrutiny of the argumentations reveals several unsubstantiated assumptions which engender provoke unfair relocation of funds.
To begin with, the author assumed that migration does not affect school population and majority of school students was born in the city. That is not necessarily true. If migration is significant in the city, birthrate itself does not indicate how many students will attend schools. Thus, the argument will benefit from providing numbers that demonstrate composition of school population in terms of “was born in the city – arrived after birth”. These numbers should be studied at least for a recent decade to eliminate cases of one-time incidents.
In the event of migration influence is insignificant, one should obtain more information of city’s birthrate over extended time to make a valid forecast of fluctuation of birthrate in upcoming decade. As you can see in preceeding argument, the author pinpoints drastic decrease of birthrate of last year only, which is not enough to make any prognoses. In fact, one-year drop might be result of distributional distortion. For example, the year before birthrate experienced significant increase (around 25%), the year in question it demonstrated decrease of 50% but in subsequent year it jumped up high again by approximately 25% again, thus, the average of 3 years will remain more or less stable and no any noticeable changes in student’s population will occur.
Moreover, even if additional evidence will confirm that birthrate is on a declining trend and migration won’t compensate it, relocation of budget fund from education and children’s recreational facilities is impetuous. Scrupulous examination of decline should be conducted to make clear prediction on enrollments for each year and understand whether decline will be truly dramatic. Decline is proven to be dramatic for 1 year only and might not take place in other years of preceding decade at all.
In conclusion, the author recommends measures hastily, relies on several flawed assumptions and incomplete data. If arguer proves that school enrollments are directly correlated with city’s birthrate and is the decline is long-term, then such a recommendation can be taken into consideration.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
also need to argue:
As a result, we will have sufficient money to fund city facilities and programs used primarily by adults, since we can expect the adult population of the city to increase.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 393 350
No. of Characters: 2101 1500
No. of Different Words: 221 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.452 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.346 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.07 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 102 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 76 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.562 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.92 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.309 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.578 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.065 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 706, Rule ID: NOW[2]
Message: Did you mean 'now' (=at this moment) instead of 'no' (negation)?
Suggestion: now
...ars will remain more or less stable and no any noticeable changes in student'...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, if, moreover, regarding, then, thus, at least, for example, in conclusion, in fact, more or less, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 12.0 28.8173652695 42% => OK
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2185.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 393.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.55979643766 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.45244063426 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.20534948039 2.78398813304 115% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.575063613232 0.468620217663 123% => OK
syllable_count: 680.4 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 71.9270463734 57.8364921388 124% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.5625 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.5625 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.6875 5.70786347227 135% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.333793455934 0.218282227539 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0979188286573 0.0743258471296 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.062842580832 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.166498652095 0.128457276422 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0884956818626 0.0628817314937 141% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.0 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.26 12.5979740519 121% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.69 8.32208582834 116% => OK
difficult_words: 121.0 98.500998004 123% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.