The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
"Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument put forth claims that the current issues faced by the Central Plaza storeowners are directly correlated with skateboarders. The decline in their business as well as increase in vandalism and littering are being attributed to the popularity of skateboarding and the author believes that restricting/prohibiting skateboarding would herald the return of the golden days. The argument makes several assumptions in its wake and begs several questions. Especially the question that, could the decline of the shoppers in the area be attributed to other factors?
Firstly, has a new mall come up in the last two years that could have now claimed a share of the Central Plaza’s customer base? Customers loyalty exists to a certain point, and no buyer can complain to having an option. This would lead to a flux between the available shopping avenues and Central Plaza, in turn, would have seen a decline in their footfalls.
Secondly, is the decline of shoppers in Central Plaza a unique phenomenon, or has the trend been tracked across all malls and shopping areas? Online shopping has become increasingly popular due to its convenience and would directly impact how much a customer would go to a mall physically. This hypothesis belies any correlation with skateboarders frequenting Central Plaza.
Thirdly, have the services present by Central Plaza recently been evaluated? It is easier to look outwards and point the blame than evaluating ourselves critically without any bias. Shopping malls and avenues have become very competitive, providing additional services to customers apart from just the stores. It is quite common to see live music performances, attractive games and playpens for kids, multiple food stalls as well as flea market festivals at the malls. Given these competitive offerings, how are Central Plaza store owners doing? Complaisance in this cutthroat race could lead loss of any but the most faithful customers and cannot be attributed just to external factors.
Fourthly and most importantly, has there been a survey among the customers in the first place? What is their professed reason for not visiting Central Plaza? Do they indeed name skateboarders to be the reason why they do not wish to shop at Central Plaza? Any decision being taken by the central plaza for their customers, especially such a petition banning skateboarders, should first take into account the opinion of the customers.
Apart from the decline of customers, the argument implies that the skateboarders are causing the littering and vandalism in the Plaza. This is a grave accusation, and brings up the question of evidence. Do the store owners have undeniable proof of such behaviour demonstrated by the skateboarders, like CCTV footage or reliable eye-witnesses, or is this a conjecture based on matching timeline? Is such littering and vandalism specific to just Central Plaza, or are other malls also facing the same problem? That would indicate a rise in vandalism in the area in general and not any direct correlation with the skateboarders. Has the Plaza analysed why such activities have increased, and provided remedial solutions? Before asking the city to ban skateboarders in Central Plaza, has Central Plaza put in efforts like adding night security, providing garbage bins at regular intervals, as well fitting and checking CCTVs to validate these accusations in the first place?
A petition like the one mentioned by the author is highly disputable and potentially discriminative. If questions presented above are not properly and unambiguously answered, it is unlikely that the city would restrict skateboarders from frequenting Central Plaza.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-04-06 | sijan | 53 | view |
| 2023-01-26 | ljh5034 | 78 | view |
| 2022-09-25 | ctoluwasedaniel | 68 | view |
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- The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner Over the past two years the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically Many Central Pl 58
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Comments
e-rater score report
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: 29 15
No. of Words: 581 350
No. of Characters: 3025 1500
No. of Different Words: 292 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.91 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.207 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.86 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 218 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 181 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 132 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 83 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.034 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.369 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.517 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.283 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.283 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.044 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 382, 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.
...d herald the return of the golden days. The argument makes several assumptions in i...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, look, second, secondly, so, third, thirdly, well, apart from, in general, as well as, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 25.0 11.1786427146 224% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3094.0 2260.96107784 137% => OK
No of words: 580.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 5.33448275862 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90746259869 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03055976825 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 289.0 204.123752495 142% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.498275862069 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 957.6 705.55239521 136% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.511323465 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.689655172 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.0 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.65517241379 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.306940177873 0.218282227539 141% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0877761339503 0.0743258471296 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.077938124363 0.0701772020484 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.165667192162 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.032535513101 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.63 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.71 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 150.0 98.500998004 152% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six 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.