An Exercise in Critical Thinking
mbayers@mmm.com
Mon, 16 Jan 1995 09:46:11 -0600
The comments on the 'ladder of inference' call to mind an exercise
that I use in a short class to re-invigorate staff members involved
in systems analysis efforts. It is related to the idea of looking
at assumptions and un-supported inferences. The idea is to read to
a group a very straightforward narrative, then have them answer a
set of questions. Each question/statement will be either True or
False or Unknown based on the data in the narrative. The process
is frequently entertaining and always enlightening. It's quite
amazing how different the answer can be among several 'right-thinking'
people!
I got the exercise from the Intl Society for General Semantics,
somewhere in California -- I don't have the address at hand. But
for about ten bucks you get an 'answer sheet' and about a dozen
worksheets. Actually, you don't _read_ the narrative to the group --
you let them read it themselves. Anyway the packet is called
the Uncritical Thinking Test or something like that. If you
have any interest, let me know and I will get the address to you.
Michael Ayers
mbayers@mmm.com (612) 733-5690