Further Discussion?

This semester, we have covered all 15 chapters from the Epstein book. We have covered everything from critical thinking to cause and effect. There are a couple of topics that I think we did not go over as thorough as the others. One of them is the importance of numbers which is chapter 13. In this chapter, it shows the importance of statistics and graphs and how it helps prove an argument. I always thought stats and numbers were always facts. But I never knew graphs can be manipulated to favor one side or another. For example, something like the average can be described many ways. There is the mean mode, median and range. They all describe the same thing the average but the differences are very dramatic. The second thing that we could have all elaborated on was the small book including small group construction. I do not think we have touched base on that book enough.

Interesting in chapter 14

Chapter 14 is about generalizations and stereotypes. What I found interesting in this chapter is that there are seven different ways to find out how valid a generalization is. But I am only going to describe the important ones. The first is sample size of the group your generalizing. The example given was "Two asian guys in my classget straight As so I am going to assume that all asians are smart. Since there are only 2 asians. Its a bad way to generalize since your sample size is only 2 guys. second one is if the sample studied well. If the sample has no strong evidence to back up its premise, then this generalization is considered bad. Third is the variation in population. What this means is that a person must make sure the premises are the same before a generalization can be made. The fourth is risk. A generalization is bad when specifics is important. For example, if a person eats a taco from taco bell and gets sick, it does not mean every taco made will cause a person to get sick.

Some things ive Learned This year

This has been my first online class at San Jose State and I though of it being a little interesting. I did not know what to expect out of this but surprisingly, I have learned a lot. In this course, I learned a lot about arguments and what makes a good or bad arguments. I also learned the different parts of an argument including the premise and the conclusions. The premise and the conclusion have to work together in order to create a strong argument, not one or the other. I also have learned the strategies that advertisements and commercials use in order for their audience to respond to their ads. they use different spites such as: fear, comedy, and pity to have the audience think what the commercial wants them to think. Persuasion has also been a big topic that we have talked about in this class. I also learned from this class that I would not take another online class again because I like to hear lectures instead of reading the book and doing exercises. I think i learn better in the classroom than at home on a computer.

Something about chapter 15

In chapter 15, it is mostly about cause and effect. What this chapter does is break down what cause and effect is and provide examples. In the simplest form, cause and effect is basicly when an action creates another action to happen. One example given from the book is "Spot caused me to wake up". This is a very weak cause and effect sentence because it does not state what did spot do to cause him to wake up. To fix this sentence so that it makes sense is "Spots barking cause me to wake up." This gives the action that spot did to cause him to wake up. In cause and effect sentences, the first action always should have a relationship with the second action. In the chapter, there are also sections that teach you specifics about cause and effect sentences such as generalizations and such. But this is the basics and i found this to be the most helpful.

Mission Critical

When I first opened up the mission critical webpage, I saw a lot of information that was useful. I like how the webpage is broken down for easier access. It is broken down into three catagories. The basic arguments, analysis of arguments, and falacies and non rational persuasion. In the basic category, I found the Premise conclusion and support section to be very helpful. In this article it breaks it down for you on what a premise needs and what makes a good premise and conclusion. Under analysis of arguments, there was a very interesting part about the differences and the uses of inductive and deductive reasoning. For the last category, the diffrences of appeals is what really help me determine the uses and when it is proper to use them. the different appeals include : fear, pitty, spite, loyalty, prejudice, and vanity. All these have their own specific place to be used and at different times.

Cause and Effect

The cause and effect was quite a read but it was definitely helpful in the long run. Cause and effect is about how effect is when something happens. As an example given in the exercise, it states that a bicyclist was riding down the bike lane but all of a sudden the bicyclist had to swerve out of the way because of a truck parked in the bike lane. In conclusion, the truck caused the biker to swerve out onto the road. So the cause is that the truck has parked in the bike lane. And the Effect was that the biker had to swerve into traffic. I found the exercises to be very helpful also. Its is because it covers everything talked about and different varieties of it. The example that they worked with in the exercise was the company picnic and the potato salad. One of the questions was "5 company workers got sick. What would be a plausible clause for them to all get sick? And the answer was the potato salad because they all ate the same thing causing their sickness. But the counter argument was that it takes 3 days for incubation period to get sick so it could not be the potato salad.

Something New About This Chapter

One part of chapter 10 that I found to interesting is the "appeal to spite". This is the appeal that invokes ones principles or morals. One example would be

John: Hey Jake do you want to go eat some porkchops? They are really good.
Jake: I cant, I am Muslim. If i eat pork, it counts as a sin.

This would be considered an appeal of spite. John is trying to convince Jake to eat pork, which is a major violation of Jake's religion. Jakes argument for not eating pork is because of his religion. It is believed Muslim believers do not eat pork because of its sanitation issues. Appeal of spite is usually used in a religious or spiritual campaign. Or it can also be based of old sayings of wisdom. Here is another example.

Bob: What time did you wake up Tom?
Tom: Oh! I woke up at 5:30am so that I can get the best prices at the department stores.

Toms actions were based off the old proverb. "The early bird gets to worm". Because he woke up early, he got the best deals at the department stores.