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 t

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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 that the author puts forward is likely to arouse several questions even in the mind of a cursory reader of the passage as it contains some serious flaws. The author has also overlook some crucial points before jumping into the conclusion about the relation between time of sleep per night and prosper in the business.

To start with, the argument has only taken into account the effect of sleeping hours on the business growth; it doesn’t study the level of efficacy of work, acumen to thrive profit margins, because they also play significant roles to prosper the firms. It may be possible that who sleeps less than 6 hours has high work potential and thus the firm experiences a huge amount of profit.

Moreover, the argument specifies that the study was on 300 executives but never points out whether the contributions to the firms, made by only the persons under consideration, are observed or the contribution by all workers are included in burgeoning profits of business. Therefore, if we consider the contribution of all workers, then from the study it is illogical to infer about the impact of less than 6 hours sleep on companies’ growth, because, it can’t clearly refer the proportion of abilities by the two different groups to make higher profits.

Lastly, the argument doesn't notify us on what kind of firms are taken under the survey. If the workers of a firm, which has already succeeded to attain its reputation in consumers, are surveyed, it is probable that this kind of firm will experience a high margin of profits. On the other hand, if we study the persons of a less famous, newly established firm, who is now struggling to settle a place in the competitive market, naturally, the profit margin for that firm will be less; because it will take several times to build the assurance about the products in consumer’s mind.

In conclusion, the points depicted in the argument to conclude that a business, who wants to experience higher profit margin, should recruit workers who need less than 6 hours for sleep, do little to bolster the inference drawn. The facts may strengthen the conclusion, if the author looks into the limitations of the study and nullifies those.

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Comments

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- could be put inside argument 1

suggested:
the study is conducted on the employees of particular firms but the result is generalised to all forms of business.

argument 3 -- not OK. it is advertising company.

suggested:
The author just comments on the people who sleep less than 6 hours that they had faster growth, but he has not said anything or conducted any analysis on those who sleep for more than 6 hours and still had higher growth margins. Even fixing this number 6 is questionable since there can be people who require still less number of hours yet perform better.

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 11 15
No. of Words: 378 350
No. of Characters: 1783 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.409 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.717 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.534 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 127 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 59 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 34.364 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.491 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.909 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.386 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.693 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.138 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5