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 statement in the article suggests that in order for a business to prosper, it should only hire people that need less that 6 hours of sleep every day, based on the research finding of a correlation between the degree of success and the time its executives need for sleep among 300 advertising executives. I mostly disagree with this conclusion for the following reasons.
First, executives that need less sleep apparently have more time available to work. If they devote all their waking hours to work, they do have more time to think about business issues, work on projects, be more responsive to clients etc. With more time put in, there may be more fruitfulness, higher production, and faster turnaround. Therefore it is possible that executive that demands less sleep is more productive.
However, that is NOT the whole story. From the survey, there is no conclusive causality between the number of hours needed for sleep and the success of the company. In the survey, the number of hours available to work is only one of the factors that CORRELATES with the profit margins and growths of the businesses. Correlation does not mean causality, as the author incorrectly assumes. The effectiveness of the executives surveyed could be caused by a range of factors, such as age, level of education, degree of experience, certain credentials etc., which then correlates with the number of hours they need for sleep. For example, it may be that all graduates from design schools sleep less because they are trained to stay up to work on their demanding design products during schools, but it is training in design schools that account for the effectiveness of the advertising executives, rather than the number of hours for sleep they need. You should hire people with a design school degree, instead of looking into their sleep patterns.
Last, but not least, the author assumes that the example of advertising business could be generalized to any business. It is possible that in other businesses, the more hours you put in, not necessarily the more results you will get. There are many such businesses. For example, some businesses rely on relationships to certain people or organizations to grow. Some businesses rely on inspired creativity, which is not easily generated from more working. If any of the above is true, the author's conclusion falls apart.
In summary, although there is a loose connection between an executive’s need for sleep time and the company’s success in the advertising industry, the author cannot draw a causal conclusion and let alone generalize it to any business. The author needs more data that can explain the cause of the success of the business, broken down by the types of businesses, before drawing a conclusion about what type of people the business should hire.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 467 350
No. of Characters: 2278 1500
No. of Different Words: 211 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.649 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.878 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.638 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 77 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.35 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.981 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.312 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.525 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.112 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 337, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...gher production, and faster turnaround. Therefore it is possible that executive that dema...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 489, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...rking. If any of the above is true, the authors conclusion falls apart. In summary...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
apparently, but, first, however, if, look, may, so, then, therefore, for example, in summary, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2365.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 467.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.06423982869 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64867537961 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.79182153404 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.464668094218 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 729.9 705.55239521 103% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 81.2639103739 57.8364921388 141% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.619047619 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2380952381 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.80952380952 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 6.88822355289 15% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.67664670659 214% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.158854914488 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.047288697808 0.0743258471296 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0414147438363 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0941028004198 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0324460332433 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.