Chp. 14

3). Pick one concept or idea from any point in the semester, or in Chapter 14, that you found useful or interesting. 

Chapter 14 is about Generalizations.  This concept seemed similar to inductive reasoning where a person takes a sample or specific events and then uses these sample observations to draw a general conclusion.  We naturally do this.  Generalization may seem to become bias, which will conclude the generalization to be weak or unplausible to believe.  Epstein states that "a sample is representative if no one subgroup of the whole population is represented more than its proportion in the population.  A sample is biased if it is not represented" (Epstein p. 284).  In addition, there is haphazard sampling which is "choosing the sample with no intentional bias" (Epstein p. 284).  We cannot be sure whether there is bias or not so we use random sampling to get a representative sample.  With random sampling every possibility has an equal chance on being representative in the sample.  This way, we are able to eliminate bias and properly generalize observations we make in order to draw conclusions.

Comm41 Online Experience

2). What was your favorite thing about this class?  What was your least favorite thing about this class?  How can this class be improved?


Out of my entire college experience and school education experience, this is my first online class I have ever taken.  I was not too sure what to expect and curious how an online class may work and how it is structured.  After taking this course, Comm41 with Professor Perez, I have found this was a great experience.  My favorite thing about this class, in particular, was probably the whole idea that this class was online.  What I mean is is that I had the ability and the convenience to do the work and weekly assignments at my own time and convenience.  It made times flexible and yet it was still structured and had its limitations to make sure I would not slack off and continue doing the weekly assignments and work.  My least favorite thing about this class was having to try interpret the book ourselves.  For example, some things in the Epstein book would be worded very confusing and I would catch myself rereading it and saying to myself "what?" or "huh?" because the way it was worded.  To improve that, I think next time I can maybe post up questions under the professor's comments for the blog of that week for quick clarifications.  It probably didn't hit my right away because it was never really pointed out.  Or also, maybe the professor can post up some quick overviews of essential concepts.  I remember this occurring in some blog, but it did not continue.

Learned in this class

1). What have you learned in this class over the course of the semester?  Please be specific. 

I have learned many concepts in this class over the course of this fall semester.  I have learned many concepts that tie in with the role of claims and arguments.  There are many ways to analyze a claim or an argument whether it can be accepted as true or false, to whether it is strong, valid, or weak.  We can determine a claim to be true or false with our own experience, but we cannot assume claims to be false with lack of evidence or be bias based on who may have said it; however, we may be able to believe people or authority figures that we trust.  Using such claims, we create a collection of claims, or premises, to make an argument to persuade others.  To help persuade others, we can use appeals to emotion.  Commercials and ads tend to use different appeals to persuade or convince their audience to follow their message from signing to for the gym, to not drink and drive, to buying a new shampoo and conditioner.  In addition, we can use reasonings to help persuade our audiences as well.  We can use inductive and deductive reasoning that uses reasoning from specific to general and general to specific observations.  Overall, we should analyze people's arguments to see how weak or strong it is and whether we should be persuaded or convinced.

Chp. 15

3). Pick one concept from the assigned reading (chapter 15), that we have not already discussed, that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.


Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The Post hoc ergo propter hoc (also known as Post Hoc theory) is basically when a possibly cause is overlooked.  Reading through the examples and explanations in the book, Post Hoc seems to occur when someone jumps to a conclusion that may not be the best possible cause for the effect.  This occurs because we try to find a reason or cause for the effect quickly and jump to conclusions to "understand, explain, so we can control our future" (p. 309 Epstein).  As Epstein calls it, we are concluding to a coincidence instead of the actual cause. Epstein points out how everything in life appears to have a cause, so we are looking for the cause to see why the effect happened, but because the life with live and world we live in is more complex than we can remember, sometimes it may just be a coincidence and may not fully know the cause for things and should not jump to major conclusions so quickly.

Mission Critical Website

2). What was useful about the Mission Critical website?

The Mission Critical website is very helpful for this class.  This website covers plenty of things to help us further our understanding of what we have been learning from the basics (parts of an argument, basic relations), analysis of arguments, and fallacies.  It breaks down everything into categories, then sub categories.  Then to further our understanding, each link further explains the topic with definitions, examples / theoretical situations, and equations.  In addition, there are exercises that you can do to test how much you understand something.  I tried the Causal Argument exercise to test my learning and try out the website.  One fault I see in the exercise portion of the website was that when I would click an answer, it would scroll me down to where the rest of the answers were and then I would accidently see the answer for the next answer because I would get lost where I was on the page since it would relocate you somewhere else on the page.  I know there is a button to get you back to the question, but it could have been constructed better because I originally thought it only hid the rest of the answers instead of relocating the page.

Cause & Effect website

1). What was useful about the Cause and Effect website reading and exercises?


The Cause and Effect website was very useful in understanding Causal Arguments more in depth.  The basic idea of Cause and Effect (Causal), is one event (A) causes the next even (B).  The Cause and Effect website makes you consider more factors about Causal Arguments.  Three main factors to cause and effects are 1. how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is, 2. how likely the causation seems to be, and 3. how credible the "only significance difference" or "only significant commonality" claim is (Causal Arguments).  Basically, we must consider all other things that may have effected the event to happen.  We cannot always say A directly caused B to happen.  There can be other considerations like the possibility that this event occurs often, occurred once, what other possible causes may have occurred, weather, time -- who, what, where, when, what, how --- anything and everything.  For example, Tim spilled water on the floor. Walking by, Sarah slipped on wet floor, which caused her to fall, which made her clothes wet from falling on the wet floor.  One argument that can be made is that if Tim didn't spill water, then Sarah wouldn't have fell on the wet floor.  Another argument can be that if Sarah only saw the wet floor, she could have dodged the fall.  There are multiple causes that can be seen to cause an event to occur.

Chp. 12

3). Pick one concept or idea from the assigned reading, that we have not already discussed, that you found useful or interesting, and discuss it.

Judging analogies. One example of a fallacy in an analogy is having too big of a difference between what is being compared in the reasoning by analogy.  In comparing two situations, you will need premises to support your reasoning.  If the two situations are far in comparison, it can be unclear to understand which will make it a fallacy.  For example, comparing the pollution around the world, to the unhealthy food you consume into your body can be unclear.  Without premises, it is not as convincing because one can see the differences between the world and their body that may not be clearly connected.  This example is in need of premises that help connect the world to our bodies like how we have control over the pollution being made like how we have control over the food we choose to eat.