The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine.
"A recent study rating 300 male and female Mentian advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Of the advertising firms studied, those whose executives reported needing no more than 6 hours of sleep per night had higher profit margins and faster growth. These results suggest that if a business wants to prosper, it should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night."
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 these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
According to the reading passage, it argues that a firm has to hire those who sleep less than 6 hours per night as the prosperity of businesses is related to the sleep duration of their employees. However, the assertation seems based on unwarranted assumptions which can make it not persuasive.
Firstly, the recent study might cover only for short-term effect while there is a possibility to report the opposite results if the study continues longer. Perhaps how they have made higher revenues and faster growth might be having more time to work compromising sleeping time. However, if it lasts longer, the opposite results can occur as some employees suffer from physical or mental health problems due to the chronic lack of sleep as convinced by numerous researchers. If then, the result in long-term might be different - less effective. If it unveiled true, the assertation is weakened.
Secondly, the study does not mean everyone who sleeps more than 6 hours shows poor performance. Perhaps the ratio of great performers with less than 6-hour sleep requirement to more than 6-hour sleep requirement is 7:3. Although a larger portion of those who demonstrated great performance sleeps less than 6 hours, the number of great performers who sleep more than 6 hours cannot be ignorable. If a firm eliminates longer sleepers’ names from candidate lists, they will lose to hire those competent candidates. Hence, making a hiring standard regarding sleep time does not make sense.
Thirdly, probably the assertation is only applicable to advertising executive roles, not to other roles in firms. In general, advertising jobs include many time-consuming tasks compared to other fields. In contrast, there are some fields which more require fresh-mind and creativity, so securing certain enough sleep time is important. The argument might be true in advertising firms, but it might not be to other kinds of businesses such as engineering or teaching. Hence, if then, the argument cannot hold water.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, seems considerably flawed due to its reliance on unwarranted assumptions. If the study was either one of those three cases mentioned above, the argument cannot be persuasive.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 3 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 358 350
No. of Characters: 1807 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.35 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.047 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.755 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 123 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 91 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.478 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.299 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.299 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.062 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, hence, however, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, while, as to, in contrast, in general, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 15.0 28.8173652695 52% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1869.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 357.0 441.139720559 81% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.23529411765 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.34677393335 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85132462563 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.565826330532 0.468620217663 121% => OK
syllable_count: 562.5 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 41.8874630025 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.3684210526 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.7894736842 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.05263157895 5.70786347227 141% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.180137077391 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0511843643543 0.0743258471296 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0511515371589 0.0701772020484 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0939483606245 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0524509232882 0.0628817314937 83% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.11 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.69 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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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.