Thursday, May 13, 2010
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.
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I agree with your blog. I think that we could have definitely spent a bit more time researching this topic. I believe that the book could have been a little bit more detailed when discussing this concept and also could of used more examples to better help explain the concepts better. The text should have spent more time explaining the dramatic differences between each concept instead of only giving brief explanations. I also agree that we maybe should have spent more time discussing the small group facilitations book as well. I think that we should have definitely spent a bit more time going over the different concept in that text as well since we did not spend to much time really getting to know the other text as well.
ReplyDeleteWow, I never thought about stats and graphs that way til you mentioned it. A lot of people consider numerical facts are true, by facts I mean like survey's or statistics or what not. But a lot of people have the same problem as this. You can think about it this way, it's like you know how in Wikipedia it's like "sort of" factual, but at the same time why believe it when I can change anything I want to it. But that's a good analogy to put on thought when thinking about chapter 13. Good luck! Hope this gets settled!
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