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 argument assumes that the committee will have sufficient money to allocate for city facilities and adult programs in the next ten year budget. The conclusion is based on the premise that decline in birthrate will lead to less number of students, as a result, the funds earlier allocated for their education and sports can now be used for adult programs and to boost city facilities. The reasoning in the argument is logically flawed, however, as it relies on a number of assumptions and lack of appropriate evidence.
First, argument provides no information on birthrate trends of the last five years. Continous data on number of child births is required to strengthen the claim the number of students in future will decline. Also, the argument only provides information only of the last year and it wrongly extrapolates that trend for next decade. For predicting the future trend , data of atleast 3-4 years is required to draw the correct statistical trend line. In addition, the claim also ignores the other possible reasons for the decline in the birth rate in the past year like less number of marriages, epidemic outbreak leading to number of birth deaths etc. Consequently, there is not much convincing information to support the claim.
Second, the author assumes that decline in students will lead to decline in budget requirements. There is no clarity on the detailed budget division and the amount that is directly used for students. In addition, the argument also ignores other factors which also account education budget like teacher wages, infrastructure, basic amenities and scholarship. Also there is no information on relation between number of students and education budget. Besides, the author also assumes that there will be decline in athletic activities owing to total reduction in student population. This statement is also unsupported; there is no survey or data to confirm this. It might also happen that even though there is reduction in number of students but number of athletic players might increase. Therefore, the argument is unsupported because of lack of evidences.
In conclusion, the claim in the argument in rather weak because of the number of assumptions. If the author would have demonstrated the claim with more evidences and data, the argument would have been strengthened. Without this additional support there is no reason to accept the conclusion in the argument.
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Sentence: For predicting the future trend , data of atleast 3-4 years is required to draw the correct statistical trend line.
Error: atleast Suggestion: at least
flaws:
The content is not well organized. Better like this:
para 1: introduction
para 2: argument 1
para 3: argument 2
para 4: argument 3
para 5: conclusion
Need to figure out the structure of the text and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
The birthrate in our city is declining: in fact, last year's birthrate was only one-half that of five years ago.
condition 2:
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.
conclusion:
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
then here goes the argument:
argument 1:
The decline in birthrates is not explained convincing enough because there are no specific statistics that indicate the constant change in five or ten year period is provided. For instance, it is a possibility that there was a baby boom five years ago because of the economic condition of the city.
argument 2:
even if the birthrates of the city is decreasing, it does not necessarily mean that the number of children who enrolled in the public schools would decline. people might move to Calatrava due to the economic welfare of the area. Hence, the number of children might increase due to this influx. In addition, the educational opportunities of the city might be better that the neighborhood cities, hence families might want to enroll their children to the public schools in Calatrava.
argument 3:
The argument misses that athletic playing fields and other recreational facilities might be used by adults as well as teenagers. more...
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 1980 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.077 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.687 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.526 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.798 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5