Category Archives: LIB 280

Reading Reflection #10: Statistics and Draft Annotation

Posted on by
Reply

 

    • Unknowable and biased statistics: Browne and Keeley write “Any statistic requires that some events somewhere have been defined and accurately identified, but these conditions are often not met” First strategy you can use is finding out how the statistics were acquired. Always ask, “how did the author arrive at the estimate?” (135)
    • Confusing averages: There are different ways to arrive at an average and the use of one may not be conducive to what we are trying to average. When faced with an average ask if it matters whether is is the mean, median, or mode. Keep range and distribution in mind. (ARQ 136)
    • Measurement errors: Ways in which things are measured may be wrong, I would ask in which way was this statistic measured, under what conditions and what was used to determine the measurement. (ARQ 136)
    • Concluding one thing, proving another: Some statistics means to determine one thing but the author uses it to determine another. What stats are needed to prove this conclusion or what can I conclude from these stats, if the author says something different then he/she might be trying to deceive us. (ARQ 138)
    • Deceiving by omitting information: Incomplete statistics. What further info do I need so I can judge the impact of these stats. If the author tries to wow us with big number beware. Keep in mind absolute numbers and percentages, if one or the other is missing, ask of its importance. (ARQ 139)

2. In the following paragraph, identify the inadequacies in the evidence:

Campaigns for national office are getting out of hand. Money is playing a central role in more and more elections. The average winner in a senate race now spends over $8 million on their campaign, while typical presidential candidates spend more than $300 million. It is time for some serious changes, because we cannot simply allow politicians to buy their seats through large expenditures on advertisements. 

I’m thinking that 300 million might be a little high, they used the mean instead of the median of mode.

3. In the following paragraph, identify the inadequacies in the evidence:

The home is becoming a more dangerous place to spend time. The number of home-related injuries is on the rise. In 2010, approximately 2300 children aged 14 and under died from accidents in the home. Also, 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs each year. To make matters worse, even television, a relatively safe household appliance, is becoming dangerous. In fact, 42,000 people are injured by televisions and television stands each year. With so many accidents in the home, perhaps people need to start spending more time outdoors.

What kind of accidents took place in the home? Also if that 2300 children was taken from a national stand point then that is a small number compared to the millions of Americans and does not conclude that spending time at home is dangerous. And I would bargain that the people being bitten by dogs each year are outside of the home and aren’t the owners of the dogs themselves. Dogs tend to guard the home. 42,000 is also a small number compared to the millions in America. I see deception by omitting information. Concluding one thing, proving another. Unknowable, biased statistics.

Reading Reflection #9: Evidence Part 2

Posted on by
Reply
  1. The scientific method is a method of doing research that requires you to take certain steps in formulating a theory. The steps include making an observation or asking a question, coming up with a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis with an experiment, and if the hypothesis holds up, you analyze the data and draw a conclusion, then voice your results. If the hypothesis does not hold up you should go back to step one, ask another question. Replication is a key characteristic of the scientific method, the fact that the experiment can be done again with the same results makes this evidence valuable. Whats more is, in conducting the experiments, researchers often use different variables to control the experiments in a way that makes the findings more verifiable and precise. Which brings me to the third characteristic, precision; researchers use more precise language rather than ambiguous language in making their claim, unlike the former evidence we read about.
  1. Surveys can be unreliable for a number of reasons, dishonesty in answering the questions, ambiguous wordings of questions, people not taking there time in the survey and just answering randomly, and many surveys are biased in their questioning. Some things you can look for in finding if a survey is reliable is the length of the survey, how the survey is conducted/the procedures behind it, the context, and how the questions are worded.
  2. The pros of research studies are in my answer to number one about scientific method. But some cons of research study are that results are not proof of a conclusion, they are only support for conclusions, (ARQ p.104). Another con is that some research studies have not been replicated yet and so are of less quality than ones that have been replicated again and again. Some studies can not be replicated and were false in their findings or their findings were, as Browne and Keeley put it; “greatly exaggerated.” (ARQ p.104)
  1. What is the quality of the source of the report? Is the article that contains the study peer reviewed? Another question to ask is how recently was the research conducted and could the findings have changed over time? Look for when the study was published whether at the same time your source was published or before, (you can find the year of a study either in the in-text citation within your souces article or in their work cited page). And one more, Is there any evidence of strong-sense critical thinking? In the sources reasonings, you can find if he/she is using evidence that is bound to his/her beliefs or if the reasonings are more open to all sides of an issue.
  2. A rival cause is an alternative causation to an event. You should start looking for one when the communicator is attempting to assert the cause of something. There are key phrases that should alert you to the possibility of a rival cause; including but not limited to: Leads to, influences, is linked to, and increases the likelihood. Some questions to ask yourself when faced with “causal thinking” (ARQ p.121) are: Can I think of any other way to interpret the evidence? What else might have caused this act or these findings? If I looked at the event from another point of view, what might I see as important causes? If this interpretation is incorrect, what other interpretation might make sense? (ARQ p.122)
  3. correlations are 2 or more events that seem to be connected in some way and can look like a cause to eachother. According to google, (because I couldn’t put into words what a cause is), a cause is a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition. The cause is more difficult to demonstrate then the correlation because there are so many combinations of events that can influences another event that the string of events that happen in order for another event to happen is often overlooked in favor of a general cause.
  4. Conclusion: Increased amounts of germs and bacteria on college campuses cause higher rates of illness in college students.
    Reason/cause: College students are less likely to sanitize living areas and common areas on campus, which in turn creates excessive germs on surfaces and in the air leading to more sickness in students
    Rival (other possible) causes: College students could contract the illness elsewhere and spread it even while cleaning living areas on campus. Or, there could be a pandemic and the school hasn’t closed down events in light of it and the rate of students being ill increases.
    Evaluation (How strong is the original argument? What’s missing?): Not very strong. Where does the communicator get this information? How does he/she know that students aren’t cleaning their living areas? How does she know there is an excess of germs on surfaces and in the air? The communicator seems to be pulling causes out of the air when there are many other possibilities of why students are getting sick. His/her evaluation of what is making the students sick is “a cause, not the cause.” (ARQ p.123)

Reading Reflection #8: Evidence Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

According to Keeley, Stuart M. and Neil M. Brown, Asking the Right Questions, evidence is information used by the writer or speaker that helps to validate certain claims, or reasons, he/she has made in an argument. (p. 91)

Personal Experience: Using things from your past experiences as evidence to back an argument. A possible problem with this one is what Keeley and Brown call “hasty generalization,” for example, if this is the case with my experience, then this must be the case for every experience that has these parameters

Case Examples: Vivid stories of events to help support a claim and to get the audience interested in whatever is being argued. While this can be good to use in helping an audience to understand the issue, this isn’t hard evidence.

Testimonials: These are reviews of events. Some can be false, especially if seeing them on the internet.

Appeals to Authority: This kind of evidence is better then the types that precede this type of evidence. You are invoking the words or works of an expert in a certain field. Trouble is the expert might be wrong, or experts contradict themselves withing the same field of expertise.

The article I read, Why Questions (Good or Bad) Matter, by Marcello Fiocco, is an article of how important it is to ask questions. He used three types of evidence in his article. Spoke from experience, “whose job it is to ask questions” (Fiocco), as a professor of philosophy and he spoke of his children saying, “I say this as a father of two small children with a tendency to ask questions for which the answers are clearly not the goal.” Case example, where he spoke of a girl who asked seemingly stupid questions about the origins of math on her tiktok page where everybody made fun of her for doing so. Except when (appealing to authority) the experts came and said that she wasn’t stupid and couldn’t really give her a straight answer to her philosophical questions because they, the experts, didn’t know. I thought that the case evidence was relevant and interesting, made me that much more engaged in the topic and got me thinking of “is there stupid questions? Or should I have more tolerance for people and their questions?” The evidence fit the argument well. Now for the personal experience evidence; I thought this could have been left out and it would have been a better argument for it. His assumption that I care for his experience/opinion or think him an expert on the issue because of it was wrong. Fiocco’s appeal to my emotions with his opinion, “I believe that asking questions should be of the utmost importance to anyone who cares about themselves or others,” was actually kind of insulting and made me angry. If he would have just stuck with the case evidence and the experts, other than himself, the article would have been awesome.

Fiocco, Marcello, Why Questions (Good and Bad) Matter, The conversation, 2 November 2020, https://theconversation.com/why-questions-good-and-bad-matter-147412

Reading Reflection #6: Logical Fallacies

Posted on by
Reply
  1. The fallacy that comes to mind is the fallacy of explaining by naming. It mainly comes up in conversations with friends and family in trying to understand a certain problem, is we state what the problem or person is doing or what they are then we feel we understand the problem when really we don’t. I’ve heard it in political commercials as well.
  2. Back in 2012 I was trying to explain to my mom why I do some of the things I do and blamed her and my dad for things they did in my past, diverting there attention from the issue and onto them using the red herring fallacy.
  3. ad-hominem, explaining by naming, slippery slope, appeal to emotion, either-or
  4. ad-hominem, explaining by naming, red herring, slippery slope
  5. For number four, instead of attacking the people complaining, it could be explained why these parties are good for the campus community. Also, instead of insulting them, state reasons why such complaints are unjustified. Something else that could be changed to make this argument better is the minimizing at the beginning of the paragraph, those actions of fights and rapes are pretty messed up and to recognize that and acknowledge it would be better. Also explain why these types of things won’t happen again, what precautions are being made to stop these sorts of actions at a party.

Reading Reflection #7: Free Write on Individual Topic

Posted on by
Reply

The topic in which I am interested is psychology and how the field treats people who are more ‘in tune’ to spirituality than they are. An example of my topic is some people deal with voices that are condescending and always reminding you of your sins. Some would call the voice Satan, and some would call it paranoid schizophrenia. The bible teaches that the enemy will tempt you to worry, tempt you to doubt God, tempt you to even curse God. So in my mind, It goes to say that the devil can put thoughts in your head, make you feel certain ways, and talk to you in your mind. The secular world of psychology teaches that we are alone in the physical world. There are no demons to sway your mind so everything in your mind must be a product of your own thoughts, for example, your past, people have told you you’re worthless and so you go over it and over it in your mind and it develops a voice, or you have done some bad things in your life and because you know these things to be bad then your shame has manifested within your brain as a person. Two very different doctrines that contradict one another and can be more damaging then if you wouldn’t have stepped within a hospital to begin with.

There is scripture that talks of demons possessing you. So are demons possessing you or do you have a mental illness needing medication and therapy. There is an obvious dilemma here, if what the bible says is real than no amount of medication or therapy is going to stop you from being possessed and hearing voices because the doctor doesn’t even believe in this stuff, so talking to one puts you in a weird position. You tell the doctor your beliefs and he tells you that all your beliefs are wrong, pretty much insulting your faith. But you just tried to kill yourself so you have to talk to a doctor as a safety precaution and the law makes it happen.

I want to research biblical articles on the subject and research into why doctors actively speak against some of the religious beliefs that people have even though the symptoms remain after psychological treatment of the “diagnosis”

In a book of the Bible called Job, the devil goes up to heaven and asks God to test one of Gods faithful servants, saying to God, of course Job won’t sin against you, you have a hedge of protection on him and he has pretty much anything a man could want, take the hedge down and let me tempt him and surely he will curse you. So God gives the devil permission to hurt Job saying, Job loves me, even if you take everything he has, he will not curse me, so the devil kills Jobs family, takes his health, and gets in the minds of his friends to tell Job, “God has abandoned you.” Job does not curse God. But me, I have cursed God, I have seen enough of Satan to wish I was dead (I don’t want this now but I say this to bring in the psychology aspect). That being said I went to the hospital where psychologists tell me I’m delusional and that the voices aren’t real. The voices are a figment of my imagination run wild. I believe this a social injustice.

Some biases I have are against psychologists and how they handle these situations which in my mind are a waste of time. My anger that they’re treatments have not worked might affect my language toward them.

Reading Reflection #5: Ambiguity and Assumptions

Posted on by
Reply
  1. Ambiguity refers to the existence of multiple possible meanings for a word or phrase.
  2. Because you may interpret the word or phrase wrong and base your opinion on it for, or against the argument.
  3. Because they often only offer synonyms or examples of the word or phrase. They don’t convey specific criteria to help understand the argument as a whole.
  4. By asking the critical question, “Do I understand its meaning,” and seeing if you can replace the term with two or more alternate meanings and seeing if its changes your position in the argument or if it changes the outcome of the paper you are reading.
  5. They are a lot like descriptive and prescriptive issues in that descriptive assumptions rely on what the world was, is, or will be and prescriptive assumptions or value assumptions are based on values of how the communicator thinks the world should be.
  6. I believe they are because how can you fight for something without first believing this is how the world should think or this is how the world should be? You can’t argue for something without having the values to back it up. For example, if I were to fight for the rights of animals I would assume that the people that I am talking to wouldn’t think that it is right to hurt an animal for no reason. Having values matters to whatever you are arguing and without them you cannot argue anything.
  7. I don’t believe they do it, or should do it, because positions we take and positions we are against are common knowledge. If we take the time to hear a speaker or to read an article, we are operating under the assumption that what we hear or read will be understood and if it not and we think the material is worth is than we will find out understanding by digging into the article or speech more thoroughly. No need to exert intentions if they are already there to find. Don’t be lazy.
  8. Independence-Obedience

Reading Reflection #4: Group Topic Article

Posted on by
Reply

My group is Health and Health Care. The article I read was State of The Science: Implicit Bias Review by Staats, Cheryl et al. The purpose of this article is to inform providers of the threat of implicit bias and that it is present in all facets of healthcare from Oncologists, to med school students. This article also aim to reduce implicit bias within healthcare. Some main points in the article come mostly from studies done within the workplace of healthcare professionals. The studies, various in methods, found much evidence of implicit bias, and outside of the studies, the message was clear that implicit bias is sickening the relationship between doctor and patient and something has to be done about it. Making staff at a med school take an implicit association test proved to be effective in that the school had the highest diverse enrollment since the school was opened (43). I believe if this happened everywhere, it would definitely reduce implicit bias everywhere. Three quotes that I will share with my group are:

  1.  “First, they predicted
    that physicians with higher implicit racial bias
    would tend to use first-person plural pronouns
    (e.g., we, us, our) more often than first-person
    singular pronouns (e.g., I, me, my) in comparison
    to their professional counterparts with lower
    levels of implicit racial bias.”
  2. “Recognizing that health care settings can often
    be hectic environments featuring stress, fatigue,
    time pressures, and other factors that can
    increase cognitive load, previous research has
    considered the notion that this environment
    may be conducive to biases.”
  3. “authors discussed four possible manifestations of implicit
    bias that can harm outcomes for pediatric
    patients, including racialized health disparities,
    stereotype threat, racial microaggressions, and
    language use.”

Work Cited: Staats, Cheryl et. al., “State of The Science: Implicit Bias Review” 2017 edition, p. 39-47 kirwanintitute.osu.edu

Reading Reflection #3: Issues, Conclusions, and Reasons

Posted on by
Reply
  1. The two types of issues are descriptive issues and prescriptive issues. Descriptive issues are issues that have questions that ask about what something is and a prescriptive issue is an issue that poses a question that challenges something that is happening.
  2. Some questions I can ask myself in finding a conclusion are: What are the writer or speaker trying to prove? What is the communicator’s main point? A question I would ask as well is, “Does the first paragraph leave me questioning?” If it does, I can skip to the end because the conclusion is often there, if not in the introduction. Other ways to find the conclusion is to look for indicator words like, consequently, therefore, thus, shows that, ect., and remember that a conclusion is not a reason, for example, “I had a nasty taste in my mouth,” is evidence to the conclusion that, “This milk is bad.” Also, you can sometimes find a conclusion if you know that your author always has a certain position, so, get to know your authors.
  3. According to “Critical Thinking” (Browne and Keeley), the combination of the reasons and the conclusion results in what we defined in chapter 2 as the “argument.” Some characteristics of an argument is that they have intent, the measurements of quality vary, and it could be a single reason for a conclusion or several reasons for a conclusion. An argument has the issue at hand, the evidence or answers to the issue, and the conclusion.
  4. The main question you ask yourself when looking for reasons to a conclusion is “Why.” “Why do the writer or speaker believe the conclusion?” Some indicator words to a reason are: because, studies show that, as a result of, and so on.
  5. Issue at hand: Intellectual Pride. Conclusion: the anecdote, or cure, for intellectual pride is a concept called intellectual humility. (Not all these terms are found in the source but I summarized it with my own terms) Reasons: Laszlo Bock, of Google, said “without intellectual humility, you are unable to learn.” Intellectual humility is the ability to understand the limits of ones own knowledge so it takes pride out of the question. Psychologist Tennelle Porter agrees with Bock and says that “Intellectually humble people are more likely to learn from people they disagree with.” Carol Dweck says that people that can’t do this have a “fixed mind-set.” The author of “How ‘Intellectual Humility’ Can Make You A Better Person,” Cindy Lamother, also got her reasonings from psychological studies published in journals, experiments that  dealt with correlations, newspapers and other sources.

Reading Reflections #2: Implicit Bias and Race

Posted on by
Reply

Implicit Bias and Microaggressions 

  1. I felt when reading, “Trouble in mind: to be black is blue in America,” that IBe would have had a better time in America if he would’ve just stopped worrying so much. Every corner he turned, it sounds like, he thought he was being persecuted for being black. I doubt very much that every instance he thought he might be getting discriminated that he actually was being discriminated. I’d say it’s a lot like the voices in my head, every voice I hear is a person that I know or have seen, maybe in class, maybe in the dorms, etc. So, I used to walk around thinking I was the only one that didn’t know what was going on. “Did I not get that job because he heard what I said in my head?” Chances are very unlikely that he heard me say anything in my head and these people are just normal people. I understand some of what IBe saw could have been discrimination, but it also could have been a little bit of paranoia. He was in Saint cloud not too long ago because he was talking about President Obama. That leads me to believe that America was already changed when he got here. I really do believe that America has changed since Martin Luther King’s day and has gotten a lot better. Everybody has the same opportunities as anyone else does, black or white, male or female, gay or straight.  

 

2. I think IBe meant that even if you’re not angry, the oppression will hurt you, get you depressed, confused, paranoid, and afraid. All of that is trouble in mind. 

 

3. A time I witnessed a microaggression is when I said to my friend that women can’t drive. I meant it as a joke, but she got pretty angry at me. I can’t recall exactly what she said but I’m sure she was saying something about how women are on the rise and women do better than men in everything, and women are more intelligent than men. So, I resolved to not hit that button again. 

 

4. I think it is very important to feel like you belong anywhere you are, including the classroom. If you are ostracized and put down, then you’re depressed and lonely, probably not doing very well in school because you don’t feel like being there. Whether it’s explicit bias or implicit bias, it hurts. On the flip side if I am feeling well and welcomed then I know that I want to be here, I know people like me for who I am and I know that I won’t get hurt or be lonely. All this will allow me to not have to worry about anything but school, in turn letting me succeed in what I am venturing to do, whatever that may be. 

 

5. All the schools I was in were pretty diverse. I never thought about being white, it was never an issue. I don’t know if it’s a privilege anymore to be white. Meaning my race is no better than anyone else is. I had the same opportunities as any other kid in my school including my African American friends, and Mexican friends, and Native American friends and they had the same opportunities as me. We never had a racial discrimination problem in my schools that I could see.  

 

6. I believe if we keep making a big deal out of race it will always be a problem. We’re blowing it up just like the George Floyd case. I don’t think that cop would have done any differently if George was white instead of black to be honest. I believe that police officer was just a violent jerk that shouldn’t have been on the force. I have been apart of diverse groups all my life and very seldom did anything racial happen, but when it did, it was out of ignorance and it was handled within the group or amongst ourselves where the problem originated. Talking about race in the classroom will only make the problem bigger than it is. The only talks we had in class about racism was in history class where it belongs. Because racism is history, I don’t see it in the future, I barely even see it now, maybe on the news, that’s about it. Every life matters. 

Reading Reflection #1: Critical Thinking

Posted on by
Reply

The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right Questions:

1 .Some values that critical thinkers have are adventure, ambition, autonomy, comfort, excellence, justice, rationality, tolerance, and spontaneity. To be honest, I didn’t hear any of these discussed along with our going over the classroom agreement. I would say though, that autonomy and tolerance are up there on the list of things to value within this class because within the class agreement are things like being non-judgemental and being respectful of others’ ideas and opinions.

2. The difference between strong sense and weak sense critical thinking is that weak sense is used for the sole purpose of defending beliefs and strong sense is used to evaluate beliefs, even the ones that we, ourselves, hold. I think strong sense critical thinking, to speak from experience, is harder to use because as a christian I didn’t want other points of view to contaminate my own. I didn’t want my judgement clouded so I rejected all other opinions other than my own. As a christian I held my beliefs closely and judged everyone around me for being the way they were. If anyone tried to question my beliefs I was quick to rebuke them with beliefs formed from the words of a book written 2000 years ago. Recent events though have caused me to re-evaluate my position and I have opened up to the possibility of there being no god and my judgements were for nothing. This will open me to new ways of thinking. Although christianity did give me useful values like prudence and tolerance, and compassion and peace and goodwill toward men, those values were very closed off by the judgements that religion had me take up. Now I can use those values in a whole world of people that might have different ways of thinking and being that before I would’ve just, potentially, dismissed. Also, If I was still a christian, taking this class, this book would’ve gotten me down quite a bit. The way it talks of rebelling against those that try to get you to believe a certain way or to be a certain way would have thrown me into the belief that the writer of this book is anti-christ and this book would have been in one ear and out the other. This book also called most christians weak minded through the use of the weak sense critical thinking because they don’t likely stray from the faith and will guard it tooth and nail, which I would say is still a pretty strong way of thinking and the book insults that way of life. Most of the ways of thinking in this book is dangerous to christians and that is why they won’t likely open up to the strong sense critical thinking, but now that I am not a christian I find this a breath of fresh air, freeing, and invigorating.

3. An argument in this class is a way to harness and grow our conclusions and those of others. It is a learning experience based on evidence, not a way to verbally abuse someone or put someone down. The books’ definition of an argument does not rely on “me” being right, whereas, often, in arguments between parents or friends, the outcome relies on who’s right and who’s wrong.

4. Everyone has there own opinion of how or why, things should be done. In my opinion there are many, “right answers,” and the one we choose should be respected unless it endangers someones’ life.

“Why Questioning?”

  1. I can relate to this chapter. In the deciding to come back to college I answered a huge question. I haven’t been the most successful person, to say the least. I was looking at my life and asked myself, “where am I going to be in ten years?”Am I going to still be working dead end jobs, trying my best just to survive? I want a wife, kids, a house, and other nice things. I can’t get any of that being a loser. I need to do something, and fast. So I applied for college and decided I am going to be a doctor. I am going to work my ass off to get what I want.
  2. I think it has a lot to do with the beliefs that are thrown at us growing up. If the answers are already in us, what’s the point of asking questions? Just do what has already been laid out for us. Also, I think it has to do with our insecurities. If we constantly believe we can’t achieve what others have and more, then we slink into what’s comfortable and stop striving. No more questions. “I can’t do that, that dream is way to big.” Then I tell you the dream is truly dead. Until you start thinking otherwise and just go for it. Bezos, Jobs, and Einstein obviously didn’t let poor thinking get in the way of them reaching the heights that they achieved.
  3. As a student I have to ask questions to succeed. I have to ask questions to gain the knowledge that I need to do well in anything that I aspire to do. As a doctor, I guess one question I should ask right now is, “do I want to be the kind of doctor that uses old techniques to diagnose and treat patients, or do I want to be the kind of doctor that will discover and build new ways of diagnosing and treating patients?”