Class notes - October 2, 2007

  1. Return of Evaluation of articles
    1. Big problems in citation.  How do you know what the thesis is?  Sometimes it is a sentence from the article, but why did you choose that as the thesis?  Many cases of telling us what you think the author said, but without reference to specifics from the article.
    2. Reasons - fully explain the reasons.  It is important to the strength of the article to understand what the reasons are and what type of reasoning they are using...do they simply use personal opinion and intution or do they turn to experts or testimony?
    3. Assumptions - look at the reasons to find the assumptions.  What assumption must we make to accept the reason.  Not all reasons require assumptions, but some do.  Find them.  Also look for the value assumptions that they use to make their stand.
    4. Thesis/issue - Some are confusing the two of these.  An issue is the question that the article is addressing.  The thesis is this author's opinion or hypothesis to solve the issue.  If you write the thesis as a question, it is the issue not the thesis.
    5. Authorial intent - Who is the author and what bias does this individual bring to the argument?  You can make some assumptions based on the writing, but be careful about overreaching.  Also look and see where the document was published.  Can you find any other information about the author?
  2. Cause/effect - Rival causes
    1. Fallacies
      1. See page 145 - What are the possible causes?
        1. The preparation helped the students
        2. and
        3. and
        4. ...
      2. How does one prove that one event or condition causes another?
        1. Problems with research studies
          1. Sampling
          2. "controls"
          3. Researcher involvment
        2. Most research studies in science include very specific criteria for how subjects are placed into groups.  See page 143.
        3. See pag 146
          1. What are some other alternative possibilities for the results?
        4. Four possible explanations
          1. X is a cause of Y
          2. Y is a cause of X
          3. X and Y are associated because of a third factor
          4. X and Y affect each other
          5. Coincidence
          6. Psychology experiments - pigeon
            1. what "caused" the food to drop?
        5. Fallacies
          1. Confusing cause and effect
          2. Neglecting a common cause
          3. Post hoc - Assuming that a particular event B is caused by another event A because B follows A
    2. Look at Passage 3 - What are the rival causes?
    3. Another one from the web site- A recent study suggests that an important cause of violent crime may be delivery complications. In a study conducted by scientists at a major university, researchers found that delivery complications at birth were associated with a much higher incidence of violent crime later in life. That is, the crime rate for children who had suffered birth complications was almost twice as high as the crime rate for those who had not.
    4. And another - I can't believe it! The judges for that essay contest must have been biased against me. There was no way I could have lost. I spent 30 hours writing and reviewing that paper, and had four people proofread it. There were two high school teachers that told me that my paper was the best they'd seen in their entire careers. I did find out, however, that the person who won goes to the school where one of the judges was selected. That must have been why I lost and this other person won; if the playing field had been even, my essay would have won out.
  3. Statistics - Can we believe them?
    1. Google search - "According to a recent survey" - 811,000 hits
    2. Google search - "According to a recent poll" - 184,000 hits
    3. Problems in statistics - sampling
      1. Think of the census - one of the biggest polls ever taken
        1. Missed people
        2. Not everyone takes the "full census"
        3. The data are only as good as the people collecting it.
        4. The data are only as good as the people reporting it.
      2. Telephone polls 
        1. Not everyone has a phone
        2. Not everyone will respond
        3. What does this do to the sample?
      3. Sampling
        1. How many are enough to become representative?
        2. What is the question being asked and answered (leading or deceptive questions)
    4. Problems in statistics - use of
      1. Using one "fact" to prove another - book example pg 158
      2. Use of mean, median, and mode - What is average?
        1. Exercise - How far away from JMU is your hometown?
        2. Mean - The average of all values.
        3. Median - The middle value - 1/2 are higher, 1/2 are lower.
        4. Mode - The value or range with the most "hits".
        5. Display matters - how do "convincers" try to make their claims seem "larger than life".
      3. Missing information - Omitting information may lead to misunderstanding.
    5. Examples from the web site
      1. Asian-American female students on this campus tend to be insular, preferring to not date non-Asian males. A recent survey examined the dating behavior of students dating students on our campus. It found that only about 2 percent of non-Asian males who are dating their fellow college students are dating Asian women.
      2. According to a recent report in Newsweek magazine (October 31, 2005), today's cheerleading has become intensely competitive and much more dangerous than it was in the old days. The numbers are staggering. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, emergency-room visits for cheerleading injuries jumped from 15,700 in 1994 to 28,400 in 2004. To make matters even worse, Newsweek reports that catastrophic injuries — those involving severe skull or spinal damage are also on the rise. The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research reports that of the 101 catastrophic injuries among female high-school and college athletes between 1983 and 2004, 55 resulted from cheerleading.
  4. Omitted Information - What questions are left unanswered?
    1. The United States has been involved in a major military action in every decade since the 1940s. These actions, unfortunately, have not come without a price. Each war has cost the United States a pretty penny in men, material, and money. It is estimated that the Vietnam War — widely regarded as a quagmire in which the United States should not have become involved — cost the United States $179 billion in modern currency, the most expensive war in American history (other than World War II.) The Korean conflict cost approximately $72 billion in modern currency. The Gulf War, a relatively thrifty and swift war, ran up the Defense budget $47.3 billion. Estimates of the costs of the present war in Iraq are already over $218 billion, and the war is still far from over. Clearly, such worldwide endeavors are diverting massive resources away from socially constructive projects that might benefit the people of the United States. We should reduce our international commitments so that we might focus on building our nation.
    2. Clues - Pages 170/171
    3. Negative view - Who will not benefit from the prescribed solution?  What are the negative effects?  Are these the only negative effects?