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 writer of the argument concludes that in order to make a business successful, it should hire people who are awake more than 18 hours a day; however this conclusion cannot be correct because it relies on a series of unproven and doubtful premises that I will delve into them below.
The first problem with the argument is the writer refers to a study but does not mention its authenticity. We do not know who were observed in this study. Perhaps people were chosen from a specific group with particular characteristics or maybe they did not give exact information because they were afraid of getting fired for the sake of sleeping a lot. In addition, the writer does not mention the target population. As you know, in research studies the greater the number of the sample, the more reliable and valid the findings are. Even if it is assumed that the enough people took part in study, there is still another problem with the sample. In a research study, the findings can be generalized to the concerned population if the sample used is representative of the target population in terms of age, sex, social class, culture and so on. However, in this argument there is no evidence to show whether the sample used was representative of the target population.
The mere fact that sleep has a positive correlation with prosperity cannot suffice to show that people with less sleep hours are more successful. other factors can lead to prosperity such as knowledge, talents, salary, and perks to name but a few. Maybe if a business provide high salary with employees, they become motivated and work with more interest that causes company's success.
another unstated assumption the argument makes is that the whole business should adopt this policy. The writer should consider that attributing this property, which is the less sleep person takes, the more success he/she gains, to every members of the business is not reasonable. In other words, the argument should consider that 300 male and female might not be representative of the society as a whole. maybe the weather in this area is clean and not polluted, therefore, people are active and 6 hours sleep is enough for them but in the rest areas with polluted weather people need more sleep to be fresh.
To sum up, the writer’s conclusion cannot be taken to be correct since, as it was clarified in the body paragraphs above, it depends on a number of assumptions each of which is questionable and challenging. The writer can strengthen his assertion by providing firm evidences that the study is correct, other factors do not interfere in a business success, and attributing less sleep to the whole society is reasonable.
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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: 16 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2168 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.744 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.605 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 150 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 107 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 73 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.562 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.734 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.688 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.571 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 147, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Other
...h less sleep hours are more successful. other factors can lead to prosperity such as ...
^^^^^
Line 13, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Another
...rest that causes companys success. another unstated assumption the argument makes ...
^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 406, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Maybe
...presentative of the society as a whole. maybe the weather in this area is clean and n...
^^^^^
Line 13, column 610, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...her people need more sleep to be fresh. To sum up, the writer's conclusion ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, in addition, such as, you know, in other words, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2238.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 456.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 4.90789473684 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62105577807 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69839785662 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 223.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.489035087719 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 702.0 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.1215790648 57.8364921388 102% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.333333333 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.3333333333 23.324526521 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.38888888889 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.104993829822 0.218282227539 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0342429817808 0.0743258471296 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0252554109515 0.0701772020484 36% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0592905149782 0.128457276422 46% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0180206486948 0.0628817314937 29% => 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: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.37 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.