The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Balmer Island Gazette.
"On Balmer Island, where mopeds serve as a popular form of transportation, the population increases to 100,000 during the summer months. To reduce the number of accidents involving mopeds and pedestrians, the town council of Balmer Island should limit the number of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies from 50 per day to 25 per day during the summer season. By limiting the number of rentals, the town council will attain the 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents that was achieved last year on the neighboring island of Seaville, when Seaville's town council enforced similar limits on moped rentals."
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 claims that Balmer Island should limit the number of rented mopeds in summer time in order to decrease the moped accidents since the number of people and moped accidents in the town increase in summer times. Stated in this way the argument reveals examples of leap of faith and ill-reasoning. The conclusion of the argument, this prohibition will decrease the number of accidents, relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws such as logical fallacies, comparing apples with oranges.
First, the argument is stretched and undeveloped. The argument readily assumes that the number of accidents increases only in summer times. However, it does not provide any statistics regarding this fact. For example, there is a possibility that the moped accidents usually occur in winter times due to poor weather conditions. In addition, there is no clear evidence that states the number of rented mopeds in summer times and this number might already be under twenty five. In this case the proposed solution would not create any benefit. The argument would be much clearer if it explicitly stated the statistics about number of moped accidents during each season and number of mopeds rented by tourists.
Second, the argument claims that limiting number of rented mopeds will alleviate the number of accidents. Even if the rented mopeds are the main reason of the accidents, these limitations might not result with the desired outcomes. It is stated in the argument, mopeds are main transportation method and after limiting their number people might prefer to travel with car. Traveling with car in the island might be more risky for the people and result with the increase in the number of accidents. In addition, because of poor transportation methods, the tourists might not prefer to frequent Balmer Island and it would cause loss of money for the populace of island. If the argument had provided evidence about other means of transportation in the island is less risky than using mopeds then the argument would have been a lot more convincing.
Finally, the argument claims that Seaville town decreased number of accidents by applying a similar policy and Balmer Island would benefit with the same result after this prohibition. This is again very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between Seaville town and Balmer Island. There is a possibility that the road infrastructure of Balmer Island is different from Seaville Island. In addition, there might be much more moped users in Seaville town and this is the reason of this dramatic decrease. In fact, there is no clear data about number of people and rented mopeds in Seaville town. Without convincing evidence that shows relation between Seaville town and Balmer Island, one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant statistics about accidents and number of moped users. In order to assess the merits of a certain decision, it is essential to have full knowledge of all contributing factors. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.
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Argument 1 -- OK
Argument 2 -- Not really. You refer something new - 'travel with car, Traveling with car in the island might be more risky...'.
Better arguments: There is no direct relationship between the amount of mopes and the number of accidents. Other reason will lead to accidents rather than the mount of mopes such as whether the mope rider are comply with the cross-regulation and the traffic situation as well as the road condition. Even though the number of mopes really related to the accident, the reduce of mopeds rented by the island's moped rental companies will not attributes to the decrease of mopes's number if most of the islander have their own mopes.
Argument 3 -- OK
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 551 350
No. of Characters: 2805 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.845 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.091 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.643 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 224 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.407 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.114 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.103 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5