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 argument claims that business owners should hire people who need less than six hours of sleep per night for their business to succeed. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion of the argument relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.
First the argument readily assumes that executives who need less than six hours of sleep perform better which in turn ensure the success of their firm. This is a weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between hours of sleep and prosperity of business. To illustrate this, it could be that the executives who need less than six hours of sleep have trouble sleeping at night or function better at early hours of the morning. This could imply that they may prefer afternoon naps. While it is possible that truly some executives do not need to sleep more than six hours to perform, the author should also avoid generalizing this statement. Perhaps if the argument had provided more in-depth study and evidence, then it would have been a lot more convincing.
Secondly the argument claims the average hours of sleep per night for advertising executives correlates with the success of their firm based on a bogus study done. 300 male and female mentian advertising executives is not representative enough to draw a conclusion. Perhaps for some reason Mentian executives do not like to sleep for more than 6 hours a day, it does not necessarily mean that it would be same for Chicago or Meryl Executives. The argument could have been much clearer if it was explicitly stated that random executives from all over the continent were chosen. This would have given us a more representative sample.
Lastly, the study does not have a control group. The author should have had a control group which consists of executives who sleep more than six hours per day then compare profitability with their counterparts who sleep less than six hours per day. This would have given us more insight as to whether hours of sleep influences profitability. Without this control group, one is left with the impression that the claim is more wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
1. the argument 1 and argument 2 are somehow duplicated.
2. need more arguments, like:
suppose it works on advertising industry, it doesn't mean it works for other businesses.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 10 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 390 350
No. of Characters: 1890 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.444 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.846 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.571 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 113 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.526 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.963 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.526 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.363 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 287, Rule ID: WHETHER[6]
Message: Can you shorten this phrase to just 'whether', or rephrase the sentence to avoid "as to"?
Suggestion: whether
.... This would have given us more insight as to whether hours of sleep influences profitability...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 477, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...king rather than substantive evidence.
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 55.5748502994 67% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1932.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 390.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.95384615385 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44391917772 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63070425271 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 179.0 204.123752495 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.458974358974 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 587.7 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.2281293276 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.684210526 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5263157895 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.05263157895 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.202363927773 0.218282227539 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0727418814694 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673452096716 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.137396874936 0.128457276422 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0453392216707 0.0628817314937 72% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.43 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.71 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.