GRE® analytical writing: argument sample

[Alexzive]

Many thanks for any correction!
Alex

Argument:

Hospital statistics regarding people who go to the emergency room after roller skating accidents indicate
the need for more protective equipment. Within this group of people, 75 percent of those who had
accidents in streets or parking lots were not wearing any protective clothing (helmets, knee pads, etc.) or
any light-reflecting material (clip-on lights, glow-in-the-dark wrist pads, etc.). Clearly, these 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.

My Response:

The statement above tries to show a correlation between the severity of roller skating accidents and the lack of adeguate protective wear or reflective equipment from the persons involved in such accidents
Though such linkage could even sound obvious and might be possible, there is no scientific evidence that it can be inferred from the mentioned statistics. Moreover the proposed solution can also be questioned.
According to these statistics “75 percent of those skaters who had accidents in streets or parking lots were not wearing any protective clothing or any light-reflecting material”.
According to logic providing a specific evidence does not allow you to deduce a general rule. In other words the proposed statement only refers to a particular circumstance (the fact that the majority of those having an accident were no good equipped). Should that automatically mean that no good equipped skaters will experience severe injuries, in case of accident ? The evidence for being “no” the right answer to this question can be provided with the following example. Consider two types of skaters, an expert and a beginner, both no good equipped but both involved in an accident. Let?s suppose that only the beginner suffered a major injury. We could eventually suppose that 75% of the bad injured skaters are beginners (nothing is said about such possibility in the above statement, so this cannot be escluded)
What might we infer from this? We are tempted to say that there is a correlation between being not practical skaters and experiencing severe injuries. But this correlation is as likely as the initial supposed correlation. Both correlations are possible but no one remains scientifically proved as the major cause for hard injuries. It is possible to even find out other correlations that perhaps have a larger basis than 75 percent.
Only a 100 percent based correlation would ultimately be the real unquestionable cause, but because this is very improbable, it seems more resonable to consider a set of causes with different distributions fro the given problem.
So which is the real cause for suffering a major injury during an accident? Being not equipped or being no expert or what?
The “logically” right answer is: with the given statistics no answer is possible.
This happens bacause such simplified statistics lack a more accurate insight on the investigated group. It is mandatory to differenciate such statistics regarding all possible categories of the group itsfel (here the skaters who had accidents) in order to eventually find real correlations by comparing differnet statistics.
And finally the believing that “investing in high-quality protective gear and reflective equipment will greatly reduce the risk of severe injuries” is also ultimately wrong or at least not rigorously demonstrable.
By contrast, If one could demonstrate that the major factor for hard accidents were “insufficient skill of the people involved”, then improving their level of preparation should be the key factor to find a valuable solution to the problem.