Remark on Critical Thinking Course
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December, 2017
Yat-Sen School
What I have learned from Critical Thinking
X***y** Chen
The course is truly essential for undergraduate students, in which Professor Barry taught us how to assess the validity of an argument and recognize the logic fallacies. By taking this course, I got to know that we need to be skeptical instead of trusting the authority. On the other hand, we should also evaluate our own research in the same way. Rather than simply assume that an experimental result in accordance with supposition can definitely support our theory, we should actually try our best to rule out all other possible explanations to strengthen the validity of our argument. To be frank, I have realized that my previous research was far from rigorous and I should have taken plenty of other possibilities into consideration. I will think more critically in the future, whether about my own experiments or about other researchers’ work.
Professor Barry’s teaching has been humorous and easy to understand. He used a lot of examples to provoke our thinking. I think it might be better to speed up a little bit in order to keep the students focused.
I sincerely appreciate Professor Barry for giving this course and I have really learned a lot.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Z*t*** Chen
In this class, we done logic analysis under the supervision of Prof. Barry. We have learnt how to judge a point is correct or not. Actually, there are many factors contributing to the invalidity of the point, like wrong assumptions, insufficient evidences and logic faulcy and etc. We are surrounded by these information in daily life and scientific research. We are supposed to judge this information based on what we learn from the class. Otherwise we would be mislead by others.
In addition, we are exposed to a American education and small class education in this class, which is different from our Chinese education. We have actively response to the professor in the class and are allowed to ask question freely. Moreover, if the classmate speaks with low volume, we could ask him for increasing his volume. All these are different from our previous experience, which seems fresh to us. And we have learnt a lot from this class.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
L**f** Gu
Curriculum thought:
In the course of a month of study, critical thinking has begun to take root in the mind, and gradually grow into a strong tree of thought, so that it gradually guides me from the perceptual side to the rational side. On the one hand, I can begin to question some so-called "standard answers", have my own set of independent opinions, dare to face challenges, and dare to challenge them; and on the other hand, I learn to use critical thinking to treat problems in scientific research. In scientific research, we often encounter a variety of unimaginable problems. Some of them may seem magical and some may be negligible. However, if we can find out the key points in critical logic and start thinking, we will certainly gain something.
A sound thinking man must use his critical thinking to examine his own behavior, and his mind must be modest and he must be fair, impartial and logical reasoning. In the modern era of information explosion, when we face with all kinds of things in society, it is even more necessary to understand how to prepare a sufficient justification to prove this point of view and to make ourselves more convinced of the correctness of our own views. Of course, we must possess a more logical way to prove a point of view, a clear statement of a reason, confirmation, proof, statement. This is a belief in one's own intellectual thinking, but also a logical one.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Name: S**h** Huang
Critical thinking is a truly useful skill in such a era of information explosion. And the key point to deal with information is to analyze it and form your own critical thinking. By take Professor Barry’s course Critical Thinking, I learned 10 critical questions we would need to ask to help us analyze information, which included summarizing the issue, conclusion, reasons of an essay or article and finding out logical fallacies in reasoning process, ambiguous parts, possibly reasonable conclusion and so on. We use critical thinking skill not only when we analyze others essays but also when we communicate with others. In order to form critical thinking skill, we need to analyze input information and pay attention to our output information whether it can follow these 10 questions. One small suggestion for the course, critical thinking is a skill that need practices to make it perfect, but we only did small amount of practices in this course. I expect more practices to make teaching process vividly. Finally, I really appreciate the wonderful course given by Professor Barry and also thank the teacher who arrange this course!
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Z*j*** Jiang
I think Barry is a very nice teacher with strong personal characteristic. he is very idealistic and admirable. he always requires us to speak loudly and not to be shy to require others to speak loudly， which really impress me for i used to keep silent in class. although，most of what he taught in the class ，to some extent, it has nothing different with what my other teachers have taught me, I understand something new that responsibility and courage is the key to conduct critical thinking. I believe, as a student with 13years of studying, we all know how to do and what is forbidden, but in many cases I don't have the courage to question others' works or words or just think ：that is none of my business! why I should waste my time and take the risk of offending others ? in the class ，Barry told many story and present what he do to us. What impressed me most are his mountaineering experience, the story of someone paint white mice black and the story of someone publish papers every serval days.at the beginning of the class, I once wondered if I go to the wrong class, why this teacher always talk about social responsibility, concept of all kinds of plagiarism ？after the whole class finished i understand. Besides, I wish Barry could update his changeless ppt., it seems that Barry use that for many years and in many cases in China. Finally, I'd like to express my gratitude to Barry.
The reflection of the course
Critical Thinking
R**c**** Li
Since I live in another campus, it takes one hour to travel from where I live to take the course.But this long and tiring travel is worthwhile . In this course I learn something that is important yet won't be taught by any other teacher.Professor's attitude towards plagiarism is impressive.I've never taken this seriously because in my surroundings there are always some students finish the project by copying results from others, and usually they get by, with no punishment at all.Since no one get punished, it leaves an impression on me that this act isn't that unforgivable, even though I do disagree with it.This course changes me a lot in this aspect.I find myself trying to stop my classmates from copying and tell them what is wrong with it recently.Actually this is the most valuable thing I learn from this course, the recognition of the value of others intellectual product and the importance of protecting them. Besides, the discussion of critical thinking help me to view people's words in a more objective and critical way.
However, I think this course can be improved. Actually the last few classes is not that informative. Professor's speed is a bit slow, some students may misunderstand what the teacher says, costing extra time in explaining and getting the meaning across and the lesson ends up talking about only few examples. I think this is a mixture of the language barrier and the unfamiliarity with the topic. So it's helpful that the professor hand us related reading materials in advance so that we can preview the topic and look up for the new expressions to handle the language problem. Actually I do get some reading material for this class but I don't find much connection between them and what we discuss in class.
Despite the drawback above this is really a good lesson. Barry is really nice and kind, hope to see him next year!
Course feeling of Critical Thinking
Dear Professor Barry:
Hello. It is my pleasure to hear from you that we are teaching critical thinking and responsible conduct of research. Although my level of English is not good enough, and the time invested in these courses is not enough, so there may be some problems in the understanding of the course. But even so, I have learned a lot in a few words. One of my biggest impact is that you mentioned in class, learning something (you use the example of pdf), the first step to download it (pdf), the second step is to read it, the third step is to understand it, The fourth step is to understand why you should read it ... This has had a big impact on my future study.
As far as course teaching is concerned, my personal advice is to be able to tell more examples or stories. It will be more interesting and we understand the relevant content more easily. For example, we could put a video on a critical thinking course and then think and evaluate the person's discussion process in the video. In this way, the class should be better.
Best wish.
L* Yu 2017.12.6
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Y*** Lin
In my opinion, Critical Thinking is a very interesting class. This class use many skills to teach us how to be a critical thinker. I will always keep the ten questions in my mind and ask myself when I am listening to a lecture or reading a paper. I appreciate what this class has told me and plan to make good use of the skills of critical thinking in my future life.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Z*y* Ruan
From October to November in 2017, I attended a series courses, namely Critical Thinking, by Prof. Masters.
It’s a pleasure to attend such a kind of courses. Prof. Masters always introduced many novel ideas to us. For example, he liked to introduce nice guys he met in his daily life to the class from time to time or told us that last night he opened his windows up so that he could try Cryonics for himself. Sometimes he even made logical fallacies to challenge us whether we were really good at critical thinking. In his first class, when he wanted to explain why every scientist shall teach young students while carrying out his/her research, he said that if people don’t teach, knowledge will fade in the end, ‘cause people, the carrier of knowledge, always died one day. However, in the following courses, I found it a typical sample of Slippery Slope. Indeed, it’s a novel way to check if the students attend these lessons carefully.
All in all, Prof. Masters always gave us memorable impression. Thank you, Barry. You give us a wonderful example that we wanna be.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
T***h** Tan
By learning the lesson of critical thinking, I learned how to judiciously judge whether or not it is credible when getting information, and understand that for the information obtained, I should take the initiative to examine it with the ten questions talked in lesson, and have my own Judgment on it but do not accept the whole. the key depends on whether given a reliable source, accurate examples and rigorous logic, in addition, in later life, before making a thesis, I should also use as much as possible The ten principles judge my own point of view, avoid ambiguous words and incomplete logical chains. This lesson is great, examples and proportions made by Mr. Barry make difficult questions more easy to understand.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Y*h** Liu
School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University
In the course of Critical Thinking, we basically learnt the 10 critical questions to ask. From my perspective, these questions are not only important in academic region, but also in social issues. I will illustrate it in the following.
After the course is over, there is a shocking news going virus on China’s social media WeChat. This issue is on the child abuse in a Beijing high-end kindergarten called RYB (where parents need to pay a considerable amount of fee to send their children there), which causes nationwide outrage. One of the reports can be found here1.1
At the beginning, there is a post on WeChat accusing the teachers in RYB sexually harassed the children besides abusing them with needles. This post triggers a huge reaction among the people. After the police investigation, it proves that the accusation of sexual harassment is fabricated. And this really can be realized by us even before the investigation, if we ask the critical questions.
(1) How good is the evidence? All the evidences shown on the WeChat post start by: My child told me that another child in the class was sexually harassed… But these are the indirect evidences, which are relatively weak. Up till now, there is no evidence from the direct victims, which makes the evidences not sufficient to support that there is a
not reasonable to say that anal fissure only comes from sexual harassment. (After the children are taken to a trusted hospital for body checking, there shows no physical
2evidence of sexual harassment.)
(3) What significant information is omitted? Many people shared a video of an interview of a young woman, describing how the children were abused with tears. This really arouses the viewers’ emotional sympathy. However, most people omit the important information of the identity of this woman. It turns out that this woman is not the parent of any child in this kindergarten. This important information is sufficient to make people feel doubtful but many of them fail to recognize this.
So I think this social issue serves a very good example of using critical thinking. When hearing a tragic news of sexual harassment of children, it is natural to feel angry. But after asking these questions, we will rethink about this issue and raise our doubts over it.
I think that the course can be improved in the future if we can have discussions over the real life issues and analyze them when illustrating the basic principles of critical thinking.
As for the academic development, these questions are really thought-provoking. As a physics senior student, I read many journal papers when doing my research. Senior year and perhaps the first few years of PhD are crucial for me to choose my research topic. Sometimes we might get lost when reading the papers, only concentrate on the specific method and fail to think over why we focus on this region. I show this using my personal experience.
This week my supervisor’s collaborator, a theoretical physicist came for a visit from Singapore. In a group meeting, he introduced to us his recent work on topoletric circuit2. The main point is using classical circuit to do the simulation of topological quantum system. I am interested in this talk and started to read his several papers and followed his ideas. During this process, I sometimes stopped and asked myself the critical
Lee, Ching Hua, and Ronny Thomale. "Topolectrical circuits." arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.01077 (2017).
questions,
(1) What are the issues and conclusions? Is it an important topic? After following all the mathematical details carefully, I have my own judgment that this method is new and helpful to probe the topological properties of the quantum systems. As known to our condensed matter community, it can be quite different to realize the topological proposal in the traditional lattice systems. So this method solve a difficult problem using a clever way to map the Hamiltonian to a classical system. But can we discover the new physics from this method? One question comes to my mind is, can we use the classical circuit to probe the far more difficult problem of many-body system with non- Abelian statistics? (2) How good is the evidence? In his paper, he used resonance of impedance to “visualize” the topological zero mode. But this evidence fails to tell the momentum sector of the mode. Can we improve the method so that the momentum sector can also be visualized?
(3) What important information is missing? This mapping method is very elegant, but they haven’t discussed on the problem of which kinds of Hamiltonian can be mapped. This is important if we want to make this method to be general.
These are just a few examples on this topic. After I came up with these questions, I came to him for further discussions and hopefully this can trigger our collaboration.
So I think that the critical questions should be asked for a scientist when carrying his/her research. There are some other critical questions which I think are important for academic people,
make their research projects seem promising and important. So it is important to have our own judgments with the help of critical thinking.
Besides, I have the following suggestion for the course, which might or might not be helpful. Since the audiences are the science students who have research experiences, the student can be encouraged to use the critical questions to comment on his/her research project. This can be interesting and though-provoking, because most of the students don’t have a careful reflection on their projects. By asking the critical questions, they can have a better thinking on their science career, and other students can also benefit from learning what other scientists are doing.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
R** Wang
I find there are so many problems about my way of thinking during this class, critical thinking. I generally know what are critical thinking questions to ask, such as what are the issues and the conclusions, what are the reasons and so on. These rules will help me to think more clearly and touch the truth. I think the meaning of this class is to perceive the essence through the appearance. Thanks for Dr. Barry’ s teaching.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Y*x* Xie
After nearly a month of studying in the class critical thinking, I believe I have benefited a lot. When we are new in the field of scientific research, it is important to understand how to determine whether information around you is true or false and get the information you need. There was no teaching materials other than the reading materials provided by Professor Barry, from which we've learned the ways and methods to think critically taught by Professor Barry. What impressed us most in this course is the 10 critical thinking issues. With the information around us, we can easily analyze them through 10 questions and dissect their usefulness.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Y*h*** Xie
Critical thinking is a useful course for college students majoring in science which, however, is not open in the school. Actually, school of philosophy opens this as a compulsory course, but we don’t have time to take the course for a whole semester. Therefore, it’s lucky of us to have this course before we graduate. The content of the course in abundant, along with many reading materials and video clips prepared for students. Totally, this course is good, but there are still some latent improvements. Firstly, I would prefer if Barry gave us a syllabus of what we would learn on each day, which is good for our preparation and the logics of the whole course. Another thing is that, as science students, we are usually interested in the science work of professors who teach us, but it’s a pity that Barry didn’t tell much of this. What’s more, the confinement of use in cellphones might be too strict, because one of my classmates, who is used to taking notes on the cellphone in class, told me that she had to sit and listen without taking any notes.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Y**x* Xu
The most meaningful thing for this course is the practice of summarizing and responding to that video called “Do schools kill creativity” and it would be good if we had more exercises like that. The discussion about fallacy could have been more systematic and rigorous by which I mean firstly, it is important to note that the word “fallacious” can only be used to describe an argument but not any statement. For example, when we talk about “ad Hominem ”, we know that the origin of an “argument” has nothing to do with its validity but when it comes to the acceptability of a personal testimony (which is a kind of “evidence”), it is important to look at the credibility of this person. It would be a category mistake to say that basing the acceptability of a personal testimony on the credibility of the person is an “ad Hominem” fallacy because personal testimony is not an argument but simply a part of it. I think during our discussion someone gave an example of a fallacy which is actually not a mistake in ARGUMENTATION. What I am trying to say is that fallacy analysis is a powerful tool but it’s important to know its boundary. Secondly, it would be good if one know the relationship between different fallacies. Some of the fallacies we talked about are actually “sub-fallacies” of other fallacies. Some of the fallacies we talked about belong to the same “family”with other fallacies. Knowing the relation between different fallacies would help one reveal the root of these logical mistakes.
Besides, I think it is not enough to simply list the ten questions and then ask students to use them as a guide to thinking critically. It is necessary to go through details of different questions and practice using individual questions to analyze arguments. I think we have talked about this before so i am not going to repeat that.
To summarize, my advice is try to use the book “Asking the right question” in class and give more opportunity for exercise. But the time constraint is indeed a problem.
Course review of Critical Thinking
Y**x** Ye
This is a very interesting and useful lecture. The part I like the most is logical fallacies and 10 critical questions to ask.
During the lecture I was thinking about examples when people use logical fallacies and how we can distinguish them by asking 10 questions. Such an analysis I read appeared in my mind.
chocolate consuming. But if we ask ourselves 10 questions, such an argument is not persuading.
First, there is logical fallacy. There might not be causality between eating chocolates and getting Nobel prize. The approximate linear relation might be just coincidence, or due to other hidden causes.
Considering alternative causes. It might be the high level of development of the country causes high probability to get Nobel prize. While most of the leading developed countries are western countries. And it happened that western countries have a tradition of eating chocolates.
And another analysis that’s similarly nonsense is about the linear relation between the ratio of female students in a major and the average grade of that major. Some people conclude that male students are averagely smarter than female students. There can be multiple reasons causing such a relation: social convention, historical reason etc. It is not persuading to argue that male students are smarter than female students from such a data.
In most of my time I also ask myself 8 of the 10 questions when I am reading arguments and forming arguments. But I don’t always think about the alternative causes and omitted information. The 10 questions tips are helpful for me to improve my critical thinking skills.
And another philosophical problem that I am curious about is whether logic itself can be invalid. For example, does causality always hold? Is there any more fundamental principle behind causality?
At last I want to put forward a suggestion to this lecture. I think it will be more helpful if students can actually practice critical thinking by discussing specific issues during the course.
Review and Evaluation about the Course of
Critical Thinking
J***y* Zhang
Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou Yat-sen School，School of Chemistry I was very happy to meet Professor Barry R. Masters and listen to the course
Critical Thinking in the past month. Although the development of critical thinking is a
long-term process, this course taught me to understand for the first time what is critical thinking and how to develop it. The ten critical questions to ask always appear in my mind until now.
The professor also used the question, what is science, as same as another course, to begin this course. This probably illustrates the importance of critical thinking, especially for scientific research. Robert W. Wood is a scientist who played with optics, and Prof. Barry had written him in his essay. As the article states, ‘From an early age,
Wood was not afraid to question the establishment.’ I believe this is an important
prerequisite for doing critical thinking, and only after thinking or doubting without fear, can we correct mistakes and discover new things.
refers to. What’s more, the hypotheses, logical fallacies, evidences, etc., all of these in these ten questions give me a real understanding of how to think critically when facing an issue. In the course, professor also took a lecture in TED on education limits children's creativity, and took us to learn how to use them to think.
It is true that as students who study in basic subjects and scientists who are engaged in scientific research, they need critical thinking not only to promote the development of research, but also to cultivate independent personality and ability to recognize issues. In the current environment with explosive growth of network information, a great deal of non-logical and fake information is flooding our lives, and we should scrutinize reports and researches from the public carefully. At this time, these ten critical questions are particularly prominent. I believe the content of this course will have a more or less impact on me from now on.
With regard to this course, I think the content and structure of the course are very good. I have learned a lot from these ten critical questions and many examples. At the same time, I also hope there is more time for us to learn more about it and more class discussions and case studies are needed, which will allow us to comprehend how to apply critical thinking into real life.
I sincerely thank Prof. Barry for his efforts in a month's time, and look forward to having another opportunity to discuss with him. I also hope professor have spent a wonderful time at Sun Yat-sen University. Look forward to meeting again.
December 1, 2017 At Sun Yat-sen University
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
Z***j** Zhang
The critical thinking course makes me more capable of recognizing the logical false in daily life. As scientific research requires ability to find out problems, this course helps me a lot in the process of doing research.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
J**y* Zheng
It’s my great honor to attend the critical thinking course taught by Prof. Barry from MIT. Frankly speaking, I benefit a lot from the course.
Prof. Barry clearly illustrated the ten questions we need to be critical. To make every question fully understand by us, He showed us plenty of vivid examples including some real cases in life. He even played a TED video to let us to put theories into practice by analyzing the logic problems in it. With what I’ve learnt in this course, I can correctly analyze daily communication as well as papers published in those high-impact journals. Meanwhile, I can also use those principles when I have to produce something on my own so that I can avoid making some logic mistakes.
Although it is critical thinking course, we still discussed a lot about plagiarism, which was quite helpful for students just beginning their academic life like me. After class, Prof. Barry kindly sent us some PDF files relating to this project so that we are able to get access to it anytime we want to review.
However, I was not so used to Prof. Barry’s teaching style to be honest. In other countries like America which Barry comes from, they tend to have smaller class and teachers care for students more. But in China we have larger size and teachers are only in charge of conveying knowledge, caring less about our reaction. So I formed a habit of doing something else while I can still get all message from my teacher. But when Barry asked us not to do other things in class and during the class he even cared about our impression, I felt a little bit uncomfortable. In addition, I think in class there’s no need to care for some details like speaking volume or so. It is not a big deal and time should not be wasted on this trivial stuff. Instead we can discuss more valued questions or learn something more effective. But anyway I still feel this course was worthy of my time I sacrificed from the lab.
Remark on Critical Thinking Course
H***y* Zhu
From this class, I have learnt a lot. Prof. Barry used many examples and explanations to show us what critical thinking is, which was very helpful to me. In this time of information overloading, it is important to discern what is true from a bunch of messages we read every day. We need to keep our mind clear. Prof. Barry gave us “ten questions to ask”, when apply it adroitly, I know that I can be a critical thinker. Also, in the class, Prof. Barry broadcast a video and led us to find the logical fallacies from that video, which induced me to think deeply.
From my point of view, we can hold more activities like what I said above because it can make us feel like really taking part in it. And since critical thinking needs practice, holding debates can be a good choice. Through debating, I am sure there will be a big progress in critical thinking ability.
Lastly, I want to thank Prof. Barry for bringing us such a helpful and wonderful course here.