Please rate the argument

[kdineshkumar007]

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 reporting needing no more than 6 hours if 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 is trying to correlate the numbers of hours a person sleeps to the efficiency of his or her work using some facts, which might seem probable and logical at the beginning. But if the argument is scrutinized then, one can find that the base of the claim is very misleading. Firstly, the author has pointed about a survey which he claims that is recent and he also states that the survey has rated 300 female and male executives of Mentian Advertising Company. The text hasn't mentioned anything about the time of the survey because recent might include 2 months or even a year. And the author hasn't mentioned anything about the age or the experience of the executives who were rated in the survey. It is possible that the survey included only young people and since they are young, they might have the energy to work even with lesser hours of sleep. Sleep is a necessary for every human and many scientists have deduced that 6 hours of sleep is nominal for every human being because it rejuvenates the human body and it makes the person fresh and zestful.

Secondly, the author has claimed that the executives who have slept for less than six hours have contributed to the success for the firm. But the author has failed to take into account neither the number of years of experience of the company nor the projects that were at their hands of the company. If the company is well established then they would have lots of experience and the executives would also know how to handle crunch situations. The company might also have a bigger project in their hands and this single project might have led to increase in their success of their firms.

Thirdly, the author hasn't mentioned about the number of working hours of these executives during the survey period. If the executives were asked to work for more than 12 hours per day then, it is possible that they would complete their works swiftly leading to higher success rate. The author has also mentioned about the higher profit margin of their company has increased during the survey period and he claims that these 300 executives are responsible for it. But the profit margin is not set by these executives as the quotation is sent only by the higher officials. It is possible that these 300 executives include only low grade workers and these workers would only have completed their tasks on time or even much earlier. But correlating the profit margin to the work of the executive is not logical.

Finally, the author has strongly inferred that for a company to be successful they should hire only people who sleep for less than 6 hours a day. So, if the company keeps this as one of the selection criterion then many of talented people might end up losing the job. This would in turn affect the company's growth because if they are rejecting a person solely based only on the criterion that he sleeps more than 6 hours a day, then they are making a foolish mistake. The author doesn't think about the people who are lethargic in their work but they might be very much efficient in their own ways. As Bill Gates has once said, "I would hire a lazy person because he would find an easy way to solve a problem". So sleep is not the only factor that a company should take in consideration while hiring a person. So, the text is flawed and these points would undermine the text completely.

[Muhammad Fayyaz]

This argument essay is based on three cardinal topics i.e conclusion, premises and assumptions. Your first paragraph should include the thesis statement i.e conclusion and cursorily state the assumptions.
In body paragraphs which should about 3 in number, you have to elucidate one assumptions each and then give ways how to ameliorate the argument.
In conclusion, recapitulate all the assumptions and points for the amelioration of the argument holistically.
Your essay contains all these points but just sequence it.

[sanaus]

Please rate my response to this argument-


The argument "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 reporting needing no more than 6 hours if 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." is flawed because of many reasons. Primarily the argument assumes that growth of a business depends on the people who need less than 6 hours of sleep but it fails to take into account the fact that people might be working extra hours for company’s benefit or it might be some new advertising strategy that has been implemented that resulted in the success and growth of the organization .Also it takes into consideration only the advertising executives from mentian descent and not all in general. These all fallacies render the conclusion invalid.

The argument fails to provide justification that how hiring people who need less than 6 hours of sleep will result in the prosperity of the business. It underestimates the fact that people who have less than 6 hours of sleep might not be sleeping as they might be working extra hours to get the extra work done for company’s success , thus depriving themselves of the much needed sleep.


The argument would have been stronger if it would have provided the fact that the Company’ s profit might have increased because of the new advertising and promotion strategy that was being implemented such as the incorporation of the social media tools for awareness and advertising which resulted in more sales and in turn higher profits.


The argument also tells that the study included only the advertising executive from Mentian descent and not all in general. So it might be possible that people of this descent have the inherent nature of taking less than 6 hours of sleep, but it might not be applicable to others such as the Asians thus making it more misleading.


Because the argument makes several unreasonable assumptions it fails to make a convincing case that the business success depends on the executives who need less than 6 hours of sleep as less sleep of company's executives is not the only factor for success and growth.

[firefly55]

Prompt:

The following opinion was provided in a letter to the editor of a national aeronautics magazine:“Manned space flight is costly and dangerous. Moreover, the recent success of a series of unmanned space probes and satellites has demonstrated that a great deal of useful information can be gathered without the costs and risks associated with sending men and women into space. Therefore, we should invest our resources in unmanned space flight."

Essay:

The assumption provided that "manned space flight is costly and dangerous" does not appear to have any reliable or valid evidence to support its notion. Although manned space flight may be costly and dangerous we cannot make the underlying assumption that unmanned space flight is more safe and less expensive. We must also consider closely the recent success that the unmanned space probes have had and examine what attributed its real success. The advantages and disadvantages also play a role in considering whether we should invest in unmanned or manned flights.

We must first examine whether manned space flight is actually more costly and dangerous than unmanned flights. For instance, why and how are manned flights more unsafe than unmanned flights. Is this purely due to the fact that it is carrying passengers or are there differences in the mechanical structure of the aeronautical device. If there are differences in the mechanical structure then we can construct the manned space flight to be of minimal or equivalent risk as the unmanned flight. If it is purely considered more dangerous because of a passenger on board then we can examine why a passenger must be needed in the first place. We must also consider why the manned flight may be more costly. Is it purely due to the costs of maintaining life on board because of the passengers. For example, more money for food, and other necessary supplies are causing manned flights to be pricier. Or is the manned flight more expensive due to other differences.

Undoubtedly, these differences in cost and safety must be analyzed through a scope of what advantages and disadvantages brings each flight. If the manned flight is more expensive because of passengers on board, then perhaps the benefits may outweigh the costs as passengers can bring back more useful information from a space flight. Also, if something were to go wrong during a space flight, passengers may be trained and better equipped to mitigate problems that an unmanned flight may not automatically be able to do on its own. Furthermore, if the the manned space flight is more expensive and dangerous we must consider how much more pricier is it from the unmanned flight. If the the cost differences are minimal and the safety hazard are not hugely disparate then perhaps investing into an unmanned space flight may not be practical.

Nevertheless, it is vital to critically examine the recent space probes and satellites that have gathered useful information. Perhaps their success can be attributed to an external variable or an accidental fluke. What evidence lies that their success was mainly due to it being "unmanned." If it was due to its mechanical structure then we cannot invest our resources into the unmanned space flight because the success of the unmanned space flight goes unwarranted. There must be a causal relationship that determined that having a passenger/passengers on flight make the space mission less successful than not having any passengers. The assumptions provided have been purely correlational as we do not know for certain what variable caused the success. Inevitably, we cannot invest our resources into the unmanned space flights because of the flimsy structure of the argument.