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 given argument is flawed for a number of reasons. It assumes that the workplace environment is same for all the firms which participated in the study, plus, it also links sleep directly to the success of the firms. These assumptions are ambiguous and hence render the conclusion invalid.
Firstly, the study fails to account for the varying level of duties among the executives - some may require more effort than the other. For example, an executive may be incharge of hiring workforce while the other may be incharge of handling finances within the company. The difference in the work hours directly affects the sleep period. This voids the assumption that the workplace environment is same for all participants.
Secondly, it also assumes that the cause of the success of a firm is the deprivation of sleep. It states the less an executive sleeps, the more prosperous the firm becomes. This implies to maximize the profit, he/she must not sleep. This is generally not true since people need sleep to function properly and hence thwarts the conclusion.
Lastly, it assumes that sleep is the only factor that affects the profit of the firm. While there is a correlation between sleep and success, it is not the only factor to affect the firm’s prosperity: the productivity of the executives, the work capacity of the employees, the process of the company also play a role for the profit of the company. This renders the conclusion moot.
Since the argument makes unwarranted assumptions about the cause of firm’s success and the role of sleep thereof, it is highly unlikely that the conclusion of the study is valid.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2020-01-21 | sapana | 63 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
No. of Words: 274 350
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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: 15 15
No. of Words: 274 350
No. of Characters: 1314 1500
No. of Different Words: 127 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.069 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.796 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.549 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 89 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 68 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 42 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 28 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.267 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.129 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.563 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 31, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...pants. Secondly, it also assumes that the cause of the success of a firm is th...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, hence, if, lastly, may, second, secondly, so, while, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 4.0 11.1786427146 36% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 29.0 55.5748502994 52% => More preposition wanted.
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: 1372.0 2260.96107784 61% => OK
No of words: 273.0 441.139720559 62% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02564102564 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.06481385082 4.56307096286 89% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69432066478 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 132.0 204.123752495 65% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.483516483516 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 423.0 705.55239521 60% => syllable counts are too short.
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 13.0 4.96107784431 262% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 58.485097817 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.4666666667 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.2 23.324526521 78% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.73333333333 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.100106848365 0.218282227539 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0357256472506 0.0743258471296 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0257063305847 0.0701772020484 37% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0563108287663 0.128457276422 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0222672064293 0.0628817314937 35% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.4 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.89 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 69.0 98.500998004 70% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.