"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.
The author of the letter concludes that a policy based on education about bicycle safety is more effective than a policy requiring helmet while riding a bike. In order to support this thesis, he offers a number of reasons needing to be explored.
First, the author mentions two studies. According to the first, the number of people wearing a helmet has increased: ten years ago, 35 percent of bicyclists wear helmets, while at present, 80 percent do so. The second provides information about the increase of accidents. The implicit assumption is that these two studies are reliable. However, this is questionable. For example, how has the study about the increase in the number of accidents been held? Has it relied on reports of people who have a bike accident? If this was the case, the study would not be reliable: many people may have falsely reported an accident; others may have not declared an accident they had had.
The author also assumes that the number of cyclists has been steady for ten years. In fact, only in this way he can argue that the number of people wearing helmets has risen. Suppose that ten years ago there was 100 bicyclists, the same current number of bicyclists. This means that ten years ago there were 35 bicyclists wearing helmets, while nowadays there are 80. However, this assumption can be rejected: it is possible that the number of bicyclists wearing helmets is far lower. If there was 40 bicyclists now, there would be 32 bicyclists wearing helmets, 3 fewer than ten years ago.
There is also an issue that is worth discussing. The author implicitly assumes that a safe course given to all cyclists would be more effective than having helmets, which, according to him, cause more accidents. However, this may not be true. Perhaps, people who would attend this course would not be motivated – studying for riding a bike? In addition, what about cyclists who would not pay attention to obstacles even if they had attended this course? Maybe if they wore a helmet, accidents would be prevented.
The argument here analyzed hides positive aim – reducing the number of bike accidents. However, the way in which is formulated needs to be improved. First, the author should rely on more trustworthy studies. Second, the author should take into account real figures, not percentages. Third, he should consider disadvantages of implementing the policy he recommends.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 402 350
No. of Characters: 1928 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.478 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.796 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.453 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 143 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 99 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 36 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 14.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.729 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.741 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.285 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.485 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, however, if, may, second, so, third, while, for example, in addition, in fact
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 0.0 11.1786427146 0% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 35.0 55.5748502994 63% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2008.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 404.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.9702970297 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48327461151 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57273374557 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.480198019802 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 612.0 705.55239521 87% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 14.0 22.8473053892 61% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 38.0560917327 57.8364921388 66% => OK
Chars per sentence: 74.3703703704 119.503703932 62% => OK
Words per sentence: 14.962962963 23.324526521 64% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.33333333333 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.274899189242 0.218282227539 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0725774357259 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.11591085614 0.0701772020484 165% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.146218863226 0.128457276422 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.134571001803 0.0628817314937 214% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 9.5 14.3799401198 66% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 65.73 48.3550499002 136% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 7.6 12.197005988 62% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.95 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.61 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 12.3882235529 52% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 7.6 11.1389221557 68% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.