Argument task review

[ankitg]

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 answeredin 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.

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The above argument in wrong on various accounts. Primarily because of many assumptions being made without the underlying supporting facts.

The argument assumes that reducing the number of rental mopeds to half would result in all attaining a 50 percent annual reduction in moped accidents. This assumption is made without the supporting fact that how each moped directly contributes to accidents. Even if every moped directly contibutes to increase in accidents, the population increases in the summer months and the cap for rental companies will be enforced during the same season. If going by the assuption, this should help reduce the accidents in that summar season only, however the assuption over the annual modep accidents is being made instead of only the summer season.

The argument also assumes that what worked for the neighboring island Seaveille will work for the island of Balmer. No details regading the cities population and traffic conditions have been mentioned. It could be possible that the city of Seaville also improved the roads and imposed stricter traffic rules which lead to the decrease in accidents. Even if the two cities are entirely similar and have same traffic structure, there could be a possibility that the city of Seaville had very few visitors last year which in turn lead to 50 perecent reduction in accidents.

The limit of 50 per day has been reduced to 25 per day but the arguemntdoes not mention any limits on the number of such different moped retal companies that can operate in the city. Since the limit has been reduced, these rental companies may open a new company under a different name which in turn would again offer another 25 mopeds. This way the number of modeps available for retal might remain the same. The argument could have been improved if no new companies were allowed to give mopeds for rental.

Because the argument makes number of unwarranted assumptions, it fails to convience how the recommendation will show the predicted results.

 

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Also if possible, please explain the score and some areas where I should improve.

Thank you so much! 

 

[thisguy2017]

2/6 (the task is not asking for how wrong the argument is but for questions that need to be answered to determine if the recommendation is valid- big difference. Always make sure to notice what the task is asking, and answer only that; that is, if you want to score 4.5 and above. Good luck.)