Whaaaaaaaaaaattt?! Okaaayyy?! Yeaaaaaaahhhhh?!

I have a hard time with Chapter 11. Although I think I know what a fallacy is, the amount of different types of structural fallacies and content fallacies is really confusing to me. The way structural fallacies were presented in the book was very confusing. The list with all the letters did not make that much sense to me. Everything was so similar although they are supposed to show how things are different. Maybe if there were examples of each it could possible help. The letters used in the section did not help me at all. If there was one thing we can discuss a little further then it would be this section. The different types of content fallacies were a little easier to understand but the sheer number of different types is what makes it hard for me. It is more of trying to memorize it that having a problem understanding it. Structural fallacies however are just plain confusing to me.

Lesson Learned.

I have learned a lot throughout the semester. I am the type of guy that enjoys a playful argument so learning about how to make successful arguments was something I am really going to put into use. What is equally helpful is learning how to analyze arguments so that I am better at making counter arguments. Another thing that I am going to take from this class is what I learned about group communication. Group communication is key when it comes to having a successful career so I am glad that this class had a section on it. Lastly, I learned how to be more organized. Having needed to post online for this class was a little inconvenient for me. I am always bust with school and work and I am hardly on the computer. I needed to figure out a system to make it work and was glad I was able to do so.

1-800 Generalization Now

Once concept that I found useful and interesting from Chapter 14 was the first section about generalizing. This section provided an excellent platform for what the whole chapter was about. This section was one of the easier one to grasp this semester. The examples used were easy to follow and provided great support to the rest of the material. This section has made me realize how much we do generalize each day. Not only that, I never realized how much people generalize when it comes to statistics. It kind of ties in with the previous chapter about misleading numbers and claims. Distinguishing between the population and sample was a little hard at first but with the examples as well as the exercises for this particular section help me really understand it. I am now able to recognize whether a generalization is good or bad. I really enjoyed this section of the chapter.

Cause:Effect, Smoking:Cancer

When I got to the section titled “Cause and Effect in Population,” I became a lot more interested. What caught my eye was the opening line which was “When we say ‘Smoking causes lung cancer,’ what do we mean?” (Epstein 320). Smoking and cancer is always an interesting subject for me to read. This section was also one of the easier ones to grasp in this chapter. I really liked the way it was organized specially with the three different experiments. The examples that followed were also very good. I liked how it continued to talk about smoking and also the second example was about drinking while pregnant. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a serious issue that not many people are aware of so seeing it as an example made it more interesting to me. Also because I was interested about what I was reading about, I believe it played a reason into why I was able to grasp the idea so easy. Great section of the chapter.

On a Mission

When I first visited the website, I was a little shocked at all the info I had to go through. As I clicked away at each link I soon realized that its contents was more than just what chapter fifteen of Epstein offered. The Mission Critical website had a lot of good info. It served as a review for me. The exercises were a plus but I feel like it was a little rough around the edges. The exercises part was kind of confusing because if you keep scrolling down it moves on to different questions and I got kind of lost. But other than that part I thought it was a very good summary of what we have been learning throughout the semester. I really liked the way it was organized in an outline form. Each subject even had its own exercise, which was a plus. I will definitely use this website again to study for the final.

So easy a caveman can do it.

At first it was fairly easy to understand the idea of casual claims. The idea of the accident between the illegally parked truck, the bicycle, and the two cars that followed was fairly easy to grasp. However, as I read more and more, it became a little confusing. What was really useful was the exercise it provided after reading through the whole thing. Although I got a little lost trying to navigate the exercise portion of the website, the content about the potato salad really proved useful in helping me learn the concept. I was able to answer all of the questions right the first time around. However I decided to purposely click some wrong answers to see what would happen. Surprisingly, the process of it explaining why an answer was wrong provided me with some extra knowledge on the subject. It helped me understand the material even more. Overall the website worked well in complementing what the book also offered.

Smoke and Mirrors

For this exercise I chose number 3 which asked to find an advertisement that uses an appeal to fear. The advertisement that I found is a picture of a cemetery that has rows of crosses to show where people are buried. However there is an area where there are no crosses which has the phrase “no smoking area.” This is a clever ad that suggests that smoking kills. It strikes the fear in people to stop smoking because if you do, you will die. I believe it is a good argument because it is well known that smoking causes all kinds of health issues, which can ultimately lead to death. What I like about this ad is that it is not as obvious as many other anti-tobacco ads. It does not just plainly state that smoking kills. It makes you think about what it is trying to say which I believe makes it more effective.