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.
The author of the article claims that the advertising firms should only hire employees who need less than six hours of sleep, and as an evidence, suggests a result of a recent study conducted. However, the article is rife with holes and assumptions, which should be eliminated for the author to maintain his/her claim. Such flaws would be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author assumes that the workers must have slept as usual during the study and also assumes that those who slept less are leading the firm to success. However, first, the author needs to clarify the duration of the study conducted. If the study was held only for a few days, then the result would be unreliable. There is a possibility that the executives slept much less than their former nights due to having extensive amount of work only during those few days. Maybe the firm was going through a crisis when the study was being held and required all the workers to be working in a lucubrate way in order to survive such catastrophe. Moreover, those who are sleeping less than six hours may not be the ones who are leading the firm to success. Maybe executives who slept much more than six hours had a higher thinking ability and finished the work much more efficiently than those who slept less. They might be the ones who helped the firm to succeed.
Furthermore, the author makes a haste generalization that due the results shown in Mentian, the same alteration should be applied to other businesses. However, the general types of work may differ in various ways throughout the business firms. Maybe needing employees who sleep less than six hours is because the usual works that need to be done in Mentian requires extensive amount of time and less amount of thinking. If much more thinking was required, then lack of sleep would have inhibited the executives to think properly, leading to increased amount of failures. Works that require much more thinking may be the general types of work in other firms, which means employees should have enough sleep, unlike Mentian.
Last but not least, maybe Mentian is a newly founded advertising business because employees sleeping less than six hours may cause sleep deprivation which only shows a temporal growth spurt. Having lack of sleep for only a few days may be a evanescent solution to fast growth. However, if this continues for more than a week, the employees may face serious sleep deprivation and would have a hard time concentrating for longer periods, leading to increase in failures as time passes by. Also, they would have shorter life span and would have to retire after ten years. If so, then the firm would have to continuously hire new executives, which requires senior executives spending time and effort on educating the novices instead of working on their actual responsibilities.
To sum up, even though the author of the article's claim seems plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the article from various points of view, it is confirmed that the author's claim does not hold a clear warrant. In order for the author to maintain his/her claim, he/she would have eliminate the defects of making haste assumptions, haste generalizations, and providing lack of substantial information on the result of the study.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 559 350
No. of Characters: 2678 1500
No. of Different Words: 238 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.862 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.791 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.477 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.304 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.343 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.321 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.321 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.116 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 598, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...quired all the workers to be working in a lucubrate way in order to survive such catastroph...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 239, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...ack of sleep for only a few days may be a evanescent solution to fast growth. How...
^
Line 5, column 296, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'eliminated'.
Suggestion: eliminated
...intain his/her claim, he/she would have eliminate the defects of making haste assumptions...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 22.0 12.9520958084 170% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2739.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 556.0 441.139720559 126% => OK
Chars per words: 4.92625899281 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.85588840946 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56592279903 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 244.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.438848920863 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 821.7 705.55239521 116% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.0074518435 57.8364921388 90% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.086956522 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1739130435 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.67664670659 257% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.144011021794 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0486839437969 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0483868689455 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0881681717911 0.128457276422 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0384344541562 0.0628817314937 61% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.95 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.