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题目:
The argument to be analyzed is as follows:
Hospital statistics regarding people who go to the emergency room after roller-skating accidents indicates the need for more protective equipment. Within that group of people, 75 percent of those who had accidents in streets or parking lots had not been wearing any protective clothing (helmets, knee pads, etc.) or any light-reflecting material (clip-on lights, glow-in-the-dark wrist pads, etc.). Clearly, the statistics indicate that by investing in high-quality protective gear and reflective equipment, roller skaters will greatly reduce their risk of
being severely injured in an accident.
Write a response in which you
• examine the unstated assumptions of the argument above
and
• explain how the argument depends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
给出的5分范文:
This argument is too weak to be convincing, relying on the correlation of two incomplete statistics. Correlation does not always imply causation, though it might be tempting to believe it is. Here, the implication is that protective gear will reduce the risk of accident. It assumes that lack of protective gear is the main cause of severe injury in roller skates, which is not necessarily true under any circumstance.
First, it claims that 75 percent of roller-skaters who have had accidents in streets or parking lots were not wearing any protective gear. This says nothing about the cause or the degree of severity of injuries. Some may have been hit by vehicles in broad daylight, in which case neither padding nor reflective material would have saved a skater. Common sense dictates that padding will reduce your risk of being injured, but in extreme cases, padding may do very little.
The argument also ignores the fact that roller-skating is something of an “extreme sport.” While the injured may have been injured with roller skates on the street or in a parking lot, the injuries may have resulted from the skater's predilection for performing dangerous tricks. Often, these tricks involve careful balancing on thin objects while moving at high speed, and it is questionable how much padding would protect a skater. One would need to compare this to the statistics of injuries occurring in skate parks.
Lastly, the last 25 percent of emergency room cases of this type are also ignored. What would be useful are the types of injuries incurred on these people as a basis of comparison. They may all have been injured so severely that they are forced into extended hospital stays. By the same argument as given above, 100% of all skaters wearing protective gear suffered extreme injuries, thus it is imperative that skaters not wear any such accessories at all.
The use of statistics is a shaky way of bolstering an already decent argument. There are too many implications derived from the data the way it is presented. As such, the numbers are an indirect method of supporting the need for more protective accessories in skating. The argument could be improved by providing more statistics detailing the nature of injuries and a better representative group with which to compare data. One simply cannot compare injuries caused by carelessness or recklessness as opposed to general accidents, at least
not statistically, as carelessness will improve the chances of injury. As it stands, the argument has too many holes with which it can be torn apart.
Comments:
【The respondent develops each of these points by offering alternative explanations and, in paragraphs 2 and 3, by calling for additional data that would be needed to confirm or refute the argument’s assumptions.
The response does not analyze the argument as insightfully or develop its critique as fully as required for a 6, but the clear organization, strong control of language, and substantial degree of development warrant more than a score of 4.】
不知道大家跟我有没有同感,感觉不是5分,而是3分吧 |
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