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Certificate of Achievement
has completed the following course:
Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age
University of Michigan
This course presented basic concepts from statistics, probability, scientific methodology, cognitive psychology and cost-benefit theory and shows how they can be applied to everything from picking one product over another to critiquing media accounts of scientific research.
4 weeks, 4 hours per week
Richard Nisbett
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
University of Michigan
Transcript
Learning outcomes
- Apply basic concepts of statistics, probability theory, the scientific method, psychology and microeconomics to the sorts of judgments and decisions we have to make in everyday life.
- Evaluate and critique reports of scientific findings in the media.
- Reflect on the most pervasive and important cognitive biases – inference procedures that are rapid and automatic but which usually produce erroneous judgments.
- Develop a broad understanding of how to make good decisions, including the logical reasoning and errors that lead to inaccurate assessments or poor decisions.
Syllabus
- Basic concepts of statistics and probability including the concepts of variable, normal distribution, standard deviation, correlation, reliability, validity, and effect size
- How to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, and why you should throw the analysis away after doing it if the decision is personal and very important
- How to accurately assess whether two variables are related to one another, and how to avoid false or illusory correlations
- Why experiments provide far better evidence about causality than correlations
- Compare logical and dialectical reasoning and gain an understanding of what conclusions may be drawn when one form of thinking is used over the other
Issued on 26th April 2022
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This certificate represents proof of learning. It is not a formal qualification, degree, or part of a degree.