I'm a teacher, musician, and filmmaker from Lawrence, Kansas https://twitter.com/beatmastermatt
Monday, October 21, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
How to Think Critically
Critical thinking is hard. That's why so many people avoid doing it. It's easier for someone to just be satisfied with their current beliefs, but one should never be satisfied. People who love learning and searching for the truth are constantly thinking critically about everything.
Critical thinking is so particularly important, however, because if you are an excellent critical thinker, you should be able to teach yourself how to do anything without the help of anyone else. You're not just building knowledge when you critically think, you're taking knowledge to a new direction that you've never been before, or perhaps no one else has ever been before.
Critical thinking is hard, but if you can do it well, every new obstacle life hits you with should become less and less of a big deal. Here is my guide to thinking critically.
In order to know how to think critically, you must first understand what "critical thinking" means. It's ironic, because you kind of have to critically thinking to come up with a definition of critical thinking- there are literally hundreds of different definitions of critical thinking out there, and many of them are quite complex.
I have studied several of these definitions, and, believe it or not, Wikipedia's definition was the most satisfying to me:
"A way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false."
However, because synthesizing is an important part of critical thinking, I would add to that definition: "Creating new claims based on reason and evidence."
So the complete definition of critical thinking is: "A way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. Creating new claims based on reason and evidence."
So, let's critically think about that definition of critical thinking. Wait a second, did I just blow your mind?
First of all, we need a claim. May I get an example of a claim from a member of the audience?
Ok, here is the claim: Football is the most popular sport in the United States.
First of all, I know what you're doing right now...and stop it. Just stop it. Your bias about football has already crept in. Most of you think you know the answer already. This brings us to the first step of critical thinking:
1. Suspending judgement
Ignore all biases you have about football, popular sports, and the United States. Clear you head and attempt to be entirely objective about the claim. In other words, keep an open mind.
2. Gather Information About the Claim
Before you gather evidence, you first need to establish criterion for the claim actually means. For example, how does one define a sport's popularity? Is it based on how many people watch it on TV? Is it based on how many people attend the games? How about the number of kids you play in little league? What about the celebrity statuses of players playing professionally or in college? What brings in the most money?
Everyone agrees what the United States is, but there is still is some debate about what a "sport" is.
Now you need to research facts both support the claim and don't support the claim. How much evidence out there supports it? There are a lot of polls that support it. With a simple search on the Web far more results come up from credible sources that this is true. The Super Bowl is the most highly rated sporting event each year. However, the evidence is not overwhelming conclusive. For example, more people attend Major League Baseball games than the NFL, NHL, and NBA combined.
3. Consider the Credibility and Biases of Your Evidence
How reliable are all of these places where you're getting the information? Most information you find in Web searches can be traced back to one source. For example, when I Googled "Football the most popular sport in the United States," nearly everything that appeared referenced a Harris Interactive poll conducted on the claim. Well, who is Harris Interactive? It turns out they're a respectable market research firm, and they seem credible based on their history of research on various topics. What about the poll? How accurate was the poll? It only asked a sample of Americans- 2,176 adults, to be exact. How were these people chosen? How were they asked the question? Were the people who conducted the poll at Harris fans of football? Did they ignore their biases? What about the data from ESPN that more people attend baseball games, by far, than NFL, in a given year? Why would ESPN like baseball to be just as popular or more popular than football?
4. Analyze and Evaulate the Evidence
Next, prioritize the evidence based on its credibility and its relevance. Some evidence may not be as relevant to the statement, and such evidence should be given less attention. Weigh the countering evidence against one other. Are there clearly more facts that support the claim or are there clearly more facts that don't support the claim? You should throw out any evidence that doesn't go either way. Depending on how deep you want to go, this can be a tedious process, so look for patterns in the evidence. Often, you're going to come back to the same basic facts in a variety of sources, because, frankly, most people are either too lazy or don't have the resources to do their own research, so they'll often do what you're doing to get their information.
Most people agree that the best forms of evidence are primary sources, which are first hand accounts from people's experiences. Professional journals are also great sources, especially if they are peer-reviewed, meaning other experts in a related field are scrutinizing the articles in them. But no source is perfect, because every source comes from a human beings, and human beings are not perfect, in case you haven't figured that out yet.
Anyway, there are probably not a whole lot of peer-reviewed articles about the popularity of football in the United States out there, so I shouldn't focus too much on that. Just remember to make sure your evidence is from a wide variety of sources.
5. Construct a Conclusion Based on the Evidence
It will be rare when all the evidence completely backs up a claim. Heck, even gravity is still just a theory. Most of the time, there are shades of gray when it comes to the truth, and we just have to accept that. Therefore, when you construct a conclusion based on the evidence, you'll usually be choosing between if a claim is sometimes true, partly true, or false. If you gone through all the steps so far, you should feel very confident about your conclusion.
So, is football indeed the most popular sport in the United States? Based on reason and the evidence, I would say it is partly true. More specifically- mostly true. There is a lot of solid evidence supporting the claim. The Harris polls has consistently tracked this to be true each year they have asked the question for the last 47 years. Other polls corroborate the Harris polls, and statistics like video game sales, the amount of money spent on high school and college football, and the number of sellout professional football games all point to football being number one in the U.S.
However, there are some caveats to the claim. Baseball, basketball, soccer, and softball all have higher numbers of kids who play little league. Also, more people attend Major League Baseball games than the NFL, by far. I suppose if the claim were "More people play football than any other sport in the United States," the results would have looked very different.
Even if my conclusion isn't spot-on, at least I went through the process of critical thinking to reach it, and that's what it's all about- the process. Critical thinking begins with our ability to ignore prejudice and suspend judgement, and it's never meant to be something that's instantaneous. We must take our time when critically thinking.
Critical thinking has a higher purpose, usually to solve a problem. A lot of people are so good at doing it that they don't even realize they are doing it. Like anything, it takes much practice. It's a skill that has to be constantly exercised and refined. In writing this, I have spent a lot of time critically thinking about critically thinking, and one thing stood out as I thought about writing this- if you are able to easily critically think, you can learn anything you want to. And with access to the internet, the possibilities are endless. Although it's important to remember that collaboration always helps learning, you would technically never need another human being to be your teacher. If you can think, you can learn from a teacher. If you can critically think, you can teach yourself. Learn on!
Critical thinking is so particularly important, however, because if you are an excellent critical thinker, you should be able to teach yourself how to do anything without the help of anyone else. You're not just building knowledge when you critically think, you're taking knowledge to a new direction that you've never been before, or perhaps no one else has ever been before.
Critical thinking is hard, but if you can do it well, every new obstacle life hits you with should become less and less of a big deal. Here is my guide to thinking critically.
In order to know how to think critically, you must first understand what "critical thinking" means. It's ironic, because you kind of have to critically thinking to come up with a definition of critical thinking- there are literally hundreds of different definitions of critical thinking out there, and many of them are quite complex.
I have studied several of these definitions, and, believe it or not, Wikipedia's definition was the most satisfying to me:
"A way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false."
However, because synthesizing is an important part of critical thinking, I would add to that definition: "Creating new claims based on reason and evidence."
So the complete definition of critical thinking is: "A way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. Creating new claims based on reason and evidence."
So, let's critically think about that definition of critical thinking. Wait a second, did I just blow your mind?
First of all, we need a claim. May I get an example of a claim from a member of the audience?
Ok, here is the claim: Football is the most popular sport in the United States.
First of all, I know what you're doing right now...and stop it. Just stop it. Your bias about football has already crept in. Most of you think you know the answer already. This brings us to the first step of critical thinking:
1. Suspending judgement
Ignore all biases you have about football, popular sports, and the United States. Clear you head and attempt to be entirely objective about the claim. In other words, keep an open mind.
2. Gather Information About the Claim
Before you gather evidence, you first need to establish criterion for the claim actually means. For example, how does one define a sport's popularity? Is it based on how many people watch it on TV? Is it based on how many people attend the games? How about the number of kids you play in little league? What about the celebrity statuses of players playing professionally or in college? What brings in the most money?
Everyone agrees what the United States is, but there is still is some debate about what a "sport" is.
Now you need to research facts both support the claim and don't support the claim. How much evidence out there supports it? There are a lot of polls that support it. With a simple search on the Web far more results come up from credible sources that this is true. The Super Bowl is the most highly rated sporting event each year. However, the evidence is not overwhelming conclusive. For example, more people attend Major League Baseball games than the NFL, NHL, and NBA combined.
3. Consider the Credibility and Biases of Your Evidence
How reliable are all of these places where you're getting the information? Most information you find in Web searches can be traced back to one source. For example, when I Googled "Football the most popular sport in the United States," nearly everything that appeared referenced a Harris Interactive poll conducted on the claim. Well, who is Harris Interactive? It turns out they're a respectable market research firm, and they seem credible based on their history of research on various topics. What about the poll? How accurate was the poll? It only asked a sample of Americans- 2,176 adults, to be exact. How were these people chosen? How were they asked the question? Were the people who conducted the poll at Harris fans of football? Did they ignore their biases? What about the data from ESPN that more people attend baseball games, by far, than NFL, in a given year? Why would ESPN like baseball to be just as popular or more popular than football?
4. Analyze and Evaulate the Evidence
Next, prioritize the evidence based on its credibility and its relevance. Some evidence may not be as relevant to the statement, and such evidence should be given less attention. Weigh the countering evidence against one other. Are there clearly more facts that support the claim or are there clearly more facts that don't support the claim? You should throw out any evidence that doesn't go either way. Depending on how deep you want to go, this can be a tedious process, so look for patterns in the evidence. Often, you're going to come back to the same basic facts in a variety of sources, because, frankly, most people are either too lazy or don't have the resources to do their own research, so they'll often do what you're doing to get their information.
Most people agree that the best forms of evidence are primary sources, which are first hand accounts from people's experiences. Professional journals are also great sources, especially if they are peer-reviewed, meaning other experts in a related field are scrutinizing the articles in them. But no source is perfect, because every source comes from a human beings, and human beings are not perfect, in case you haven't figured that out yet.
Anyway, there are probably not a whole lot of peer-reviewed articles about the popularity of football in the United States out there, so I shouldn't focus too much on that. Just remember to make sure your evidence is from a wide variety of sources.
5. Construct a Conclusion Based on the Evidence
It will be rare when all the evidence completely backs up a claim. Heck, even gravity is still just a theory. Most of the time, there are shades of gray when it comes to the truth, and we just have to accept that. Therefore, when you construct a conclusion based on the evidence, you'll usually be choosing between if a claim is sometimes true, partly true, or false. If you gone through all the steps so far, you should feel very confident about your conclusion.
So, is football indeed the most popular sport in the United States? Based on reason and the evidence, I would say it is partly true. More specifically- mostly true. There is a lot of solid evidence supporting the claim. The Harris polls has consistently tracked this to be true each year they have asked the question for the last 47 years. Other polls corroborate the Harris polls, and statistics like video game sales, the amount of money spent on high school and college football, and the number of sellout professional football games all point to football being number one in the U.S.
However, there are some caveats to the claim. Baseball, basketball, soccer, and softball all have higher numbers of kids who play little league. Also, more people attend Major League Baseball games than the NFL, by far. I suppose if the claim were "More people play football than any other sport in the United States," the results would have looked very different.
Even if my conclusion isn't spot-on, at least I went through the process of critical thinking to reach it, and that's what it's all about- the process. Critical thinking begins with our ability to ignore prejudice and suspend judgement, and it's never meant to be something that's instantaneous. We must take our time when critically thinking.
Critical thinking has a higher purpose, usually to solve a problem. A lot of people are so good at doing it that they don't even realize they are doing it. Like anything, it takes much practice. It's a skill that has to be constantly exercised and refined. In writing this, I have spent a lot of time critically thinking about critically thinking, and one thing stood out as I thought about writing this- if you are able to easily critically think, you can learn anything you want to. And with access to the internet, the possibilities are endless. Although it's important to remember that collaboration always helps learning, you would technically never need another human being to be your teacher. If you can think, you can learn from a teacher. If you can critically think, you can teach yourself. Learn on!
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