In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is therefore sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The argument that the city’s government should increase the money budgeted for riverside recreational activities is based on the logic that the starting a river clean up will, within the year, result in a significant number of the residents wanting to participate in such activities.
The first unstated assumption this argument makes is that if the river is clean, it will be able to support the popular water sports – swimming, boating, and fishing. Firstly, for all of these water sports, this assumes that the river is free of dangerous animals like crocodiles. In particular, for swimming it assumes the river is relatively calm and free of dangerous currents, for boating it has sufficient depth, and for fishing there is a healthy, sustained fish population that was largely unaffected by the pollution in the river.
If this assumption is false, and the cleaner river will not be able to support the desired water sports, any money channelled into the riverside recreational facilities will be wasted on other activities the populace may not be interested in.
Another important assumption is that one year is sufficient time for the clean up to complete and the riverside recreational facilities to become operational. If the clean up takes longer, the facilities will be left unattended and thus it is important that the facilities must be funded so that they do not lay in disuse, which would be a waste since it would take time off the total span of operations the facilities can get before they will need to be updated again.
Yet another assumption is the that the survey results are representative of the time and ability of the residents to participate in the recreational activities. It is possible, based on the selected sample, that the people surveyed do not represent the majority of the populace. Furthermore, even if they are, the residents may enjoy the activity but may not have the time, money, or ability to participate in them on a regular basis. Thus, the updated recreational facilities may not get the level of use this argument suggests.
Therefore, the argument for increasing the city’s budget for the riverside recreational activities in light of the river clean up makes three major assumptions, and if any of those do not pan out, re-budgeting would lead to an inefficient use of the city’s budget.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-29 | jason123 | 66 | view |
| 2020-01-26 | jason123 | 59 | view |
| 2020-01-20 | Ammu helen | 16 | view |
| 2020-01-17 | ramji90 | 82 | view |
| 2020-01-13 | shekhawat24 | 49 | view |
- In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes littl 86
- Many lives might be saved if inoculations against cow flu were routinely administered to all people in areas where the disease is detected. However, since there is a small possibility that a person will die as a result of the inoculations, we cannot permi 80
- As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate.Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. 83
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly
----------------
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: 12 15
No. of Words: 389 350
No. of Characters: 1903 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.441 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.892 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.831 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 124 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 79 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 32.417 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.751 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.391 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.725 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, furthermore, if, may, so, therefore, thus, in particular
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1980.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 390.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07692307692 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44391917772 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94733077739 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.466666666667 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 632.7 705.55239521 90% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 19.7664670659 61% => 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: 32.0 22.8473053892 140% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 71.9367005699 57.8364921388 124% => OK
Chars per sentence: 165.0 119.503703932 138% => OK
Words per sentence: 32.5 23.324526521 139% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.41666666667 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.181047885486 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.07408780847 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0488529234857 0.0701772020484 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0996633258969 0.128457276422 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0561022184023 0.0628817314937 89% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.7 14.3799401198 130% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.0 48.3550499002 81% => OK
smog_index: 13.0 7.1628742515 181% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.8 12.197005988 130% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.78 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.58 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 83.0 98.500998004 84% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.8 11.1389221557 133% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.