Critical Thinking Flashcards
Misinformation
Due to the rampant increase in conspiracy theories critical thinking is becoming evermore important. Your intuitions can sometimes be wrong so a process of comprehension is necessary to understand the world.
Theory
A set of formal statements that explains how and why certain events or phenomena are related to one another. These come from ideas based on real-life events. In order to test these we develop a hypothesis and test that with experiments.
Scientific Method
A step-by-step procedure by which scientists make theories it involves identifying a problem, hypothesising, testing the hypothesis, analysing the data to draw conclusions and building a body of knowledge to eventually develop a theory (additions experiments are run to try and disprove the theory in order to test validity).
Idealised Experiments
An experiment type involving a control group which is isolated, a test group which is subject to the independent variable and a dependent variable which is a measurable statistic for both group which can compare the results of both groups at the end of the experiment.
Descriptive/Correlational Research
Due to the ethical implications of some experiments not everyone can be tested. This type of experiment simply observes the real-world in order to gather data and reach conclusions about the world based on the small group that is observed.
Correlation Patterns
These range from 0 to 1. It is small at 0.1, medium at 0.3 and large at 0.5 and above. The effective size determines whether the correlation is significant or not.
Causal Influences
Despite finding correlation between 2 variables this does not confirm causality e.g. success results in happiness but the argument could be made that happiness results in success. Another experiment must be done to determine a causal link.
Quasi Experiment
In this experimental control participants are allocated to different experimental conditions on a non-random basis. This is often seen in natural everyday settings where the researcher has little control of the participants e.g. testing life expectancy and socio-economic status.
Random Similarities
There are situations in which 2 sets of data despite not having a correlation line up in a way that seems to determine a relationship however this is completely random e.g. amount of cheese consumed and chance of dieing from bedsheet strangling.
True Randomisation
In this experimental control are allocated to different experimental conditions on a random basis e.g. participant 1 to trial A and participant 2 to trial B despite any ideas or notions of the participants characters.
