NS4H Final Exam Study Guide

MWF 8 am section (Zellmer)

Fall 2002

See the Preliminary Study guide for a copy of the information found on the first page of the exam. The exam is 40 multiple-choice questions and is worth 200 points. Be sure to bring your 882 scantron form to the exam.

The first few questions have to do with what is meant by Real Evidence, and will have you interpret real data on a subject that we have spent a fair amount of time on in the course. A graph is involved that you have seen before. There will be questions about fallacies, experimental designs, significance of statistical results and the application of Mill's Methods to the data. You may also be asked about the other two ways we gave you to define causality: mechanistic and legal. Chaotic and synergistic systems are in there too.

Coincidences are more common than we think. Why is that? And speaking of causality, check over your notes from Amelie, she will be making an appearance on the final exam, as will the philosophers we had that represented different world views.

Check over the Baloney Detection Kit we went over. There are questions on how to recognize pseudoscience, both by content and by tactics.

Now that we have causality and more complicated situations to analyze, we bring back our old friend The Argument, but now apply our new tools to the examination of the premises in that argument. What makes a premise valid or not valid?

Not wanting to neglect our friends from the pseudoscience and paranormal worlds, review the tricks used by so-called "psychics" to bamboozle the unwary. They also rely on the problems of human perception that we have discussed at length and reviewed in the Baloney Detection Kit. Various types of alternative medicine will be present, of course. Review the kinds of claims they make and why people fall for these. Review the various ways that generalizations can go astray: we have quite a long list of these.

There are questions that combine The Argument, Hypothetical Reasoning, our list of Fallacies and Baloney Detection in an attempt to get closer to The Truth. One of our big problems with hypothetical reasoning was learning how to ask The Good Question. Why is that?

Don't forget all the time we spent studying Analogies. They make a comeback in several places on the Final Exam, but now are mixed with all the things we learned after completing Moore, Ch. 2. I'll also check to see if you remember the difference between an Inductive and Deductive argument, only now we can use a more sophisticated probability model to help us distinguish these two.

Brush up on your p's and q's, and Latin phrases like Modus Tollens. We will unleash these in the direction of disease detection, and even take a crack at Santa Claus. Add these, plus existentialism to your sentences, and you can wow the people around you. Just remember to use your new powers for Good.

We explored some hot-button topics in class, including Creationism, Gun Control and your Right to drive a big gas-guzzling SUV. How did we apply the tools of Critical Thinking to these topics?

No final exam would be complete without a visit from our good friends the Space Aliens. How can we use the Criteria of Adequacy to examine the claims that They Are Among Us?

Although what we learned about Inductive Generalizations has been applied throughout the exam, there are some questions that specifically address the material we learned in Moore, Ch. 3, so brush up on those terms, definitions, and applications.

Recall our Gallery of characters who taught us about the Ultimate Cause of Everything, or maybe just bad coleslaw.

It is getting near the end of the exam. Did I hit all the topics we had in class presentations? There's one I missed! I put in a question about it.

In the last few questions I try to both Mystify you with Mathematics and Baffle you with Baloney! I'm sure you can now wade through all of this and discover The Truth, or at least the most correct multiple choice response. Remember, Inference to Best Explanation is still the battle cry of the pragmatists.

Good luck.