Unit 1 · Topic 1.5

1.5 Types of evidence

Writers defend claims with evidence (facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes, expert opinions and more) and with reasoning that shows why the evidence matters. Each type of evidence has strengths and limits, and the best choice depends on what the claim needs.

Key terms

evidence
statistics
expert testimony
anecdote
example

Evidence and reasoning

Evidence is the material that supports a claim. Reasoning is the logic that connects evidence to the claim. A writer can defend a claim with evidence, with reasoning, or with both, but evidence alone rarely convinces anyone. Readers need to see why it counts.

Types of evidence

Type	What it is	Strength	Watch out for
Facts	Statements that can be checked	Hard to dispute	Can be dull without explanation
Statistics	Numbers from counts, surveys or studies	Show size and patterns	Easy to misread; check what is being counted
Examples	Specific cases of a general point	Make ideas concrete	One example can't prove a broad claim
Anecdotes	Short stories of real events	Create emotion and memory	Can be unrepresentative
Analogies	Comparisons to something familiar	Make the unfamiliar clear	The two things may differ in key ways
Expert opinion and testimony	What specialists or witnesses say	Borrows credibility	Experts can be biased or outside their field
Personal experience and observation	What the writer saw or lived	Vivid and honest	Hard to generalize
Details and illustrations	Specific features of a subject	Help readers picture it	Can pile up without a point
Experiments	Results of controlled tests	Can show cause and effect	Depend on how the test was designed

Matching evidence to the claim

Different claims need different evidence. If you claim something is common or widespread, numbers help. If you claim something is painful or unjust, a story or a detailed scene shows it. If you claim a policy will work, examples of where it worked, or expert testimony, carry more weight.

Strong writers often combine types. Numbers show how big a problem is; a story makes readers care. Jacob Riis, a journalist who documented New York City's tenements in How the Other Half Lives (1890), does exactly this. In one chapter he walks readers into a dark hallway and up to the door of an apartment where a child is dying of measles; in another he cites official death counts that show the scene is not a rare case.

Reading numbers carefully

Before you use a statistic, ask exactly what is being counted, compared with what, and from which source. A percentage of deaths is not a death rate. A survey of 20 people isn't a survey of a nation. Misreading the number is one of the most common traps in both reading questions and essays.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Statistics in Riis, and a classic trap
In How the Other Half Lives (1890), Jacob Riis writes about one crowded block known as "the Bend": "the late Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of children in a specimen year (1882). Their per centage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20." What type of evidence is this, what exactly does it show, and how does it support Riis's claim that the tenements were killing children?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Type: statistics from an official source (a government commission), which adds credibility.
2. Step 2: Read the number carefully. 68.28 is not the share of children who died. It's the share of all deaths in the block that were children's deaths. In the Bend, children made up about 68 percent of the people who died; citywide, children made up about 46 percent.
3. Step 3: Notice the comparison. Riis sets the block against the whole city, so readers can see the Bend is worse than normal, not just sad.
4. Step 4: Explain the support: if children made up a much larger share of deaths in the Bend than in the city as a whole, something about living there was especially deadly for them. The word "only" before 46.20 pushes readers to see the gap.
Answer: The evidence is a statistic from an official commission, compared against a citywide figure. It shows that children accounted for about 68 percent of deaths in the Bend but about 46 percent across New York City. That comparison supports Riis's claim by suggesting the block's conditions, not just ordinary illness, made children far more vulnerable. (Trap: saying "68 percent of the children died" misreads the statistic.)

Common mistakes

Calling every piece of evidence "a fact." Name the type, because the type tells you what it can and can't prove.
Using one anecdote to support a sweeping claim about everyone.
Misreading what a statistic measures, such as treating a share of deaths as a death rate.
Naming the type of evidence and moving on without explaining how it supports the claim.

On the exam

Reading questions often ask what a piece of evidence "primarily serves to" do. Think about its type and its job in the argument.
In the argument essay (Question 3), specific evidence from history, reading, current events or your own experience all count. Readers reward specific evidence over general statements.

Connected topics

Videos

Types of Evidence for Argumentative Essays | AP Lang Q3
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Check yourself

4 questions on 1.5 Types of evidence. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

(1) Good evening, members of the council. (2) My name is Maya Ortiz, and I am a junior at Ridgeview High School. (3) Every school morning, I cross Larkin Avenue with about two hundred other students who walk from the apartments on the east side. (4) There is no crosswalk, no signal and no crossing guard between Fifth Street and the school's front gate.

(5) Last month, a driver swerved to miss a freshman who had stepped into the road between parked cars. (6) Nobody was hurt, but several of us saw it happen, and none of us has forgotten it. (7) Since the Larkin Commons apartments opened in August, the number of students walking this route has grown, and traffic has grown with it. (8) According to the city's own traffic count, about 640 cars pass the school between 7:15 and 8:00 a.m.

(9) I am asking the council to install a marked crosswalk with flashing signs at Larkin Avenue and Sixth Street. (10) The city's transportation office estimates the cost at about $38,000. (11) Many of you have children or grandchildren who walk to school, so you know how much a safe route matters. (12) Personally, I think the council has ignored the east side of town for years. (13) Thank you for considering this request.

Written for this practice set: a student's draft of a short speech for the public-comment period of a city council meeting.

Question 1 of 4

Sentence 8 cites a traffic count. Why is this evidence likely to be effective for this audience?

It is ten years and over, now, since that line divided New York's population evenly. To-day three-fourths of its people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them. The fifteen thousand tenant houses that were the despair of the sanitarian in the past generation have swelled into thirty-seven thousand, and more than twelve hundred thousand persons call them home. The one way out he saw—rapid transit to the suburbs—has brought no relief. We know now that there is no way out; that the "system" that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay, a storm-centre forever of our civilization. Nothing is left but to make the best of a bad bargain.

What the tenements are and how they grow to what they are, we shall see hereafter. The story is dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart. If it shall appear that the sufferings and the sins of the "other half," and the evil they breed, are but as a just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice, it will be because that is the truth. The boundary line lies there because, while the forces for good on one side vastly outweigh the bad—it were not well otherwise—in the tenements all the influences make for evil; because they are the hot-beds of the epidemics that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half million beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with deadly moral contagion. This is their worst crime, inseparable from the system. That we have to own it the child of our own wrong does not excuse it, even though it gives it claim upon our utmost patience and tenderest charity.

What are you going to do about it? is the question of to-day. It was asked once of our city in taunting defiance by a band of political cutthroats, the legitimate outgrowth of life on the tenement-house level. Law and order found the answer then and prevailed. With our enormously swelling population held in this galling bondage, will that answer always be given? It will depend on how fully the situation that prompted the challenge is grasped. Forty per cent. of the distress among the poor, said a recent official report, is due to drunkenness. But the first legislative committee ever appointed to probe this sore went deeper down and uncovered its roots. The "conclusion forced itself upon it that certain conditions and associations of human life and habitation are the prolific parents of corresponding habits and morals," and it recommended "the prevention of drunkenness by providing for every man a clean and comfortable home." Years after, a sanitary inquiry brought to light the fact that "more than one-half of the tenements with two-thirds of their population were held by owners who made the keeping of them a business, generally a speculation. The owner was seeking a certain percentage on his outlay, and that percentage very rarely fell below fifteen per cent., and frequently exceeded thirty.... The complaint was universal among the tenants that they were entirely uncared for, and that the only answer to their requests to have the place put in order by repairs and necessary improvements was that they must pay their rent or leave. The agent's instructions were simple but emphatic: 'Collect the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants.'"

Jacob A. Riis, a newspaper reporter and photographer, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890), from the introduction. Just before this excerpt, Riis describes the tenements, crowded rental buildings where most poor New Yorkers lived, as the boundary line between comfortable New York and the "other half."

Question 2 of 4

In paragraph 1, the figures about tenant houses ("fifteen thousand" that have "swelled into thirty-seven thousand") primarily serve to

Question 3 of 4

In paragraph 3, Riis supports his view of what causes drunkenness among the poor mainly by citing

Question 4 of 4

Quoting the agent's instructions, "Collect the rent in advance, or, failing, eject the occupants" (end of paragraph 3), is effective evidence mainly because it

0 of 4 answered