The following appeared as part of an article in a business magazine."A recent study rating 300 male and female advertising executives according to the average number of hours they sleep per night showed an association between the amount of sleep the execu

The author of the article in a business magazine recommends hiring only people who need to have less than six hours of sleep per night. This conclusion is buttressed by the result of recent research. To give a comprehensive estimation of soundness of the argument we need to look at the evidence closer.

First of all we know that the study was conducted with 300 male and female who work in advertising business. The originator of the argument tends to extrapolate the result of this particlular research on all nations, countries and kinds of business. Is this arrogant extrapolation reasonable? Perhaps 300 people is not enough to reparesent the whole planet popluation, the study should include many nations and countries, we need to know who were inlude in the sample of the research. What is per cent of men and women in the sample? In other words, to accept the writer's conclusion we need to learn more about the sample of the study.

Moreover, the study was carried out with one kind of business activity - advertising, probably, the usage of the data which was acquired with one particular branch of business is unwarranted due to the fact that each business has its specific and oddities, for instance, the exucutive of a software company has different characteristics than a CEO of a company which advertises some products. Thus, the implementation of the recommendation in any field except the advertising is questionable.

Furthermore, we were told that the most successful executives claim to need only six hours of sleep per night. At the same time, the probability exists that we confuse the correlation and causation. Perhaps executives who work at the most lucrative and successful firms are overloaded with the work and therefore they cannot afford to sleep more than six hours. Probably, the firm's success may work as energetic for these people. For instance, if an executive knows that tomorrow he or she will sign an agreement with brings them millions of revenue, the one cannot sleep and anxiously wait for the dawn. In other words, the writer's opinion that the number of hours which a person needs impact on success of a firm on which the person works is not supported properly.

In conlusion, the given argument maintains that if an executives need to sleep less than 6 hours per night, the firm which is hired them will have more profit is not supported properly. In fact, the given data is extrapolated unreasonably and the sample of the study is too narrow to be used for the whole population of the planet.