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.
In this article, the author concludes that a business should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night if it wants to prosper. To validate this conclusion, the author cites a recent study which suggested a potential association between the amount of sleep the executives need and the success of their firms. Close examination of the assumptions related to the study, however, reveals that they cannot lend credible support to the conclusion.
Firstly, one problem involves the statistics about 300 advertising executives. To draw out the conclusion above, the author must falsely assume that these persons can represent all the employees in the advertising industry, or even more, all kinds of industries. It is entirely possible that 300 executives make up only a relatively small portion in the advertising industry. Though executives in a successful firm may actually need less time to sleep, other staff in the same firm may spend more time sleeping because they have less responsibility and pressure at work. Furthermore, considering the industry of transportation, the drivers definitely need more sleep to restore energy and thus secure safety on the road. Accordingly, the study has to make thorough research involving more representative samples to guarantee the relationship between sleeping time and potential success of a business.
Secondly, even if the study is representative enough to imply an association between sleeping time and success of the firm, it is not sufficient to conclude that firms whose executives need less sleep will have higher profit margins and faster growth. The conclusion depends on additional assumptions that sleepless executives are the reason why firms can succeed. However, the cause-and-effect relationship can be entirely reversed. In all likelihood, a firm may make profits by increasing the total workload. Employees will have to spend more time in the company to finish their piles of work, which in turn, limits the time for them to rest and sleep. Moreover, the causality may not be existing at all since there are no substantiated science theories on how sleeping time may affect accomplishment. In this way, the assumption of the author is tenuous if there is no new evidence to support it.
Thirdly, the author believes a business seeking for prospering should hire only people who need less than 6 hours of sleep per night. However, this is based on a dubious assumption that only employees who sleep less can contribute to success in a firm. Even if employees with less sleeping time may be more productive at work and eventually help bring prosperity to the firm, it does not necessarily say that people with other virtue cannot make efforts on the growth of the company. Perhaps a manager though sleeps more than 6 hours per night, is so intelligent and together that she can make the most agreeable decisions to help the company to develop. Therefore, regardless of a wholesome understanding of what abilities actually contribute to the success of a firm, it cannot establish a competent assumption that only people who sleep less can bring a business to prosper.
To sum up, the author fails to substantiate his claim that business should hire only people who sleep less than 6 hours per night because the argument relies on certain specious assumptions. To reinforce it, the author would have to develop a more representative study on the sleeping time of employees; additionally, he would have to present evidence to validate the causality between sleeping time and accomplishment. Therefore, if the argument had included the given factors discussed above, it would have been more thorough and logically acceptable.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 599 350
No. of Characters: 3041 1500
No. of Different Words: 249 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.947 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.077 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.886 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 215 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 176 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 127 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 84 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.958 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.624 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.497 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.103 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, actually, but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, as to, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 30.0 12.9520958084 232% => Less auxiliary verb wanted.
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 79.0 55.5748502994 142% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3115.0 2260.96107784 138% => OK
No of words: 599.0 441.139720559 136% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20033388982 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.94716853372 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96575644174 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 266.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.44407345576 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 963.0 705.55239521 136% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.8623104158 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 129.791666667 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.9583333333 23.324526521 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.5 5.70786347227 114% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.164417111734 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0529840476449 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0464563133732 0.0701772020484 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.109316624773 0.128457276422 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0328059059485 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.41 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 136.0 98.500998004 138% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.