Week 10 - 3 of 3

The one concept I think could have further discussion is Appeal to Emotions. Not only being one of my favorite, I think it may be the most important. That is, we see it and use it in everyday life, and practically everyday. I do not think there is an ad outside or on T.V. that I do not have some type of emotional reaction to. We never think about it but things that we think are stupid, or silly make us feel something as well. This concept cannot only teach us how to overcome our emotions towards thinking about them but also how to use them to our advantage. Because our emotions are so strong, we usually go with them instead of taking the time to really think about things from every perspective and really choose the best way or idea. Appeal to Emotions are usually intended (obviously) aimed for our emotions. This class and the book teach us how to set aside our emotions and think logically. If we spent more time on this, I really think it could help us later on in life.

Week 10 - 2 of 3

I am a little confused about the first question for this post. It sounds almost like the first question of the first post. What I learned throughout this semester is procrastinating is unhealthy. Not only unhealthy, but inconvenient, stressful, and nonsense. I know this is something I should have learned back in grammar school but I thought I could do everything. Then again I believe I was thinking with emotions instead of logic. Which is what I learned throughout this semester in this class. My favorite part of this class, believe it or not, was reading what people commented on my posts. I was so excited when I received an email saying that someone commented on a post of mine. The least favorite part of this class was the reading, in my opinion. In the beginning of a semester, I am always excited and on top of everything. But as time goes on in a semester, I become lazy and begin to procrastinate. And in this class I have learned how the way I think and do things, is not always the best. Especially emotionally and physically. I am happy that I took this class!

Week 10 - 1 of 3

What have I learned from this class over summer? Well overall I have learned how to think more logically rather than emotionally. When reading the chapters and writing the blogs, I began to think in the way the book shows us to. It was weird at first because I would think to myself, "Woah. I learned from class to think this way for this thing. And to choose what I say wisely and carefully for this thing." It's kind of cool really. The real life examples really helped me to understand the concepts better from the book. I think reading other people's blogs and creating my own with these real world examples was my favorite part. Being able to actually transfer what you learn from a class into your own life is one of the most important and true things we can learn in my opinion. When I say my own life, I don't mean for work or school, but my own personal life. When that happens, I think that the teacher did a very good job teaching me something. Some concepts I still don't quite understand, but I think the new website: Mission Critical, will definitely help me and hopefully others clarify any confusions. Anyway, what I took from this class was tips that I can use for the rest of my life!

Week 9 - 3 of 3

I must admit I wasn't too thrilled about this post when I saw what we had to do. So I went around and decided who I wanted to get together to help me with this assignment. I chose my sister, mother, boyfriend, and roommate. So I told them why I had brought them together and why I needed their help. I explained to them what this class was about and that they needed to go over my second major assignment with me. I handed them each a copy of my groups essay for the second major assignment. Before they began reading, I told them what the assignment was about and what my group was supposed to do. They each read over the essay a couple of times and I got different feedback from them. Most of them said that the essay itself need work on. Not all the parts flowed together and there were mechanical errors throughout the essay. From what they know about the ASPCA (that is the organization my group picked to search) they thought that we did a good job with answering all the prompt questions. my mom thought that we did an excellent job; that's because she just loves me! I told them that there was a problem with one of our group members and they then could understand why the paper seemed rushed in some parts. My roommate thought that we could have explained some of the words and phrases that were bold since she has never taken a critical thinking class before. Overall, this was a good assignment and I am happy I did it. I got great feedback that will help me.

Week 9 - 2 of 3

The Mission Critical Website is a great tool for students who are taking Critical Thinking courses. That's because this website was specifically designed to help students and teachers with Critical Thinking. It has an index of everything you need to learn about arguments, claims, premises, etc. Each category has subcategories that have definitions, examples and exercises to help further your knowledge and better understand critical thinking. When looking over the website and its different pages, I see a lot of things that we learned over this semester. I think to myself, "Hey I learned about that, or I know what that is, and even I think I should take a look at this to see if this website can help me understand this concept in more detail." I also like that the website shows that there are new parts they are working on. Though you cannot see many of them, a few or on display. The one that I really like is the "Visual Models" one. On this page, there are diagrams drawn to help students see the examples visually. I think this is a great idea because not only can students imagine it they can actually see it. Not all of us learn the same. So incorporating visual aids is a great way to help enhance the learning process for all of us.

Week 9 - 1 of 3

The Casual Arguments Website and Exercises was useful for a couple reasons. First and for most, is does a great job in explaining what a casual argument is through examples in my opinion. A casual argument carries out the implication that there is only one significant difference according to the Mission: Critical (Casual Arguments) Website. The example that they used, showed that one thing caused another thing to do something which caused another thing to do something which caused another thing to do something. Another example of a casual argument would be: The rain made the roads wet which made the tires wet which caused the tire to loose traction with the road which caused the car to hydroplane. This example shows that from one single thing something happened and from that another thing happened. The rain cause the roads to be wet. The wet roads caused the tires to be wet. The wet tires lost traction to the roads. No traction caused the car to hydroplane. Thought it may be challenging to find real world situations, I believe that this is one that happens a lot during the rainy season. The exercises confused me at first, but the work picnic was another great example of casual argument that helped me understand it better.

Week 8 - 3 of 3

Another concept I found interesting and useful from Chapter 13 was apples and oranges. This is a numerical comparison where it doesn't make sense to compare the items. I see people use such comparisons all the time. And I think to myself, "what the heck are you thinking?!" For example: Grace has the biggest crush on Josh. She has found out that his favorite color is blue. The dance is next week and she really wants to impress him. She thinks that by wearing blue all this week and next she will have a 52.67% chance of getting asked to the dance by Josh. This makes no sense to compare. Even though she might be wearing blue the entire time does not mean Josh will ask Grace to the dance (Even though I probably would have done something like that back in high school). Apples and oranges is used a lot of times to make something practically impossible sound reasonable. This is a great concept to know when arguing and when to tell whether a comparison with numbers, particularly percents, is true, valid, or just nonsense.