A recent five-year study of the sleeping habits of a selection of people challenges the belief that receiving at least eight hours of sleep a night is healthy. People in this study who reported sleeping eight or more hours a night had a higher rate of specific health problems than the subjects who slept seven hours a night on average. People who reported sleeping five hours a night had only a minimal increase in health issues compared to those who slept eight hours a night. It is apparent that people should try to sleep seven hours each night; therefore, getting too much sleep is worse for one’s health than getting too little sleep.
Write a response in which you discuss the soundness of the conclusion. Discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to consider how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.
The passage above claims that people should aim to get seven hours of sleep each night because, in the cited study, those who reported sleeping more than eight hours or less than seven had higher rates of health issues. There is not sufficient data presented here for the author to draw the conclusion that all people should sleep for seven hours to get maximum health benefits. Numerous important variables are absent from the information presented that would substantiate the author’s conclusion.
The author does not give crucial facts regarding the study; without this information, it is impossible to safely state that people should sleep seven hours per night. When was the study conducted? How many people were involved? What were the ages and genders of the subjects? These are all critical pieces of information. We are also unaware of other health risk factors such as diet, stress levels, alcohol consumption, whether the person smoked; all of these variables have a major impact on a person’s overall health, and sleep is but one variable. Only comparing the number of hours of sleep people received and ignoring these other factors is specious logic.
Another glaring omission is the health of the subjects prior to the study beginning. People who are healthier tend to need less sleep than people whose health is compromised in some way, so it is not clear which came first: Did the participants who slept longer do so because they had health problems, or did the fact that they slept longer than eight hours make them unhealthy? It can’t be determined based on the limited information given. In addition, we are not privy to what kind of health problems the study’s subjects suffer from. It is not clear if the health issues are mental or physiological. Sleep clearly impacts both mental and physical health, but the causal relationship between health and sleep is not evident based on this particular study.
There is also no mention of the degrees of health problems between those who slept for eight hours or more versus those who slept less than seven hours, other than saying that the difference was “slight.” It is too simplistic to suggest that people are better off sleeping too little rather than too much as it ignores other important factors.
The author is not necessarily incorrect in his conclusion, but as mentioned above, there isn’t enough information present to adequately prove his thesis. The writer needs to present more facts about the study and its participants in order to substantiate the idea that seven hours of sleep is ideal for most people. It is a mistake to make such a sweeping generalization based on the limited information presented.
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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: 21 15
No. of Words: 450 350
No. of Characters: 2192 1500
No. of Different Words: 217 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.606 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.871 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.447 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 64 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.431 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.381 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.312 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 214, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun hours is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...orted sleeping more than eight hours or less than seven had higher rates of health i...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, regarding, so, in addition, kind of, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2319.0 2260.96107784 103% => OK
No of words: 451.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.14190687361 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60833598836 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91671132945 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 228.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.505543237251 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 688.5 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 87.9404770285 57.8364921388 152% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.95 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.55 23.324526521 97% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.3 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 1.0 5.15768463074 19% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.302540716207 0.218282227539 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0840955599191 0.0743258471296 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0850841656136 0.0701772020484 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.302540716207 0.128457276422 236% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0628817314937 0% => 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: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.83 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.44 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Minimum four paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.