Logical deduction Implication and innuendo Statistical and Causal Generalizations Controlled studies Assessing credibility of statements
What you need to be able to do, with regard to each:
Definitions, necessary and sufficient conditions: Be familiar with the
“necessary and sufficient conditions” format for defining a term. Know the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition. Be able to read a definition and answer questions about what it implies.
Logical deduction: Know the terminology concerning arguments that we
covered, including argument, premise, conditional, antecedent, consequent, conclusion, valid, invalid, sound. Know the patterns of deductively valid argument that we covered, including modus ponens, modus tollens, disjunctive syllogism/argument by elimination, chain argument. Be able to tell when an argument does not fit into one of these patterns; in particular, be familiar with the fallacies denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent.
Implication and innuendo: Be able to distinguish what is logically implied by a
statement as opposed to what is merely being suggested by it. If you are given a statement, you should be able to state what is being suggested or insinuated by it, and show that the suggestion is not logically implied by explaining how the original statement could be true even if the suggested statement is false.
Statistical and Causal generalizations: Terminology includes inductive
argument, inductive generalization, characteristic of interest, target population, sample, representative sample, biased sample, random sample, statistical generalization, method of agreement, method of difference. Be able to identify all of these where they occur, and explain their roles.
Controlled studies: Some of the terminology from above applies. In addition:
hypothesis, control group, experimental group, independent variable, blind, double-blind, statistically significant. Be able to read a description of a study and identify its strengths and weaknesses.
Assessing the credibility of statements: A claim is credible to the extent that it
is likely to be true. Assess the credibility of a statement, or a story, by checking it for coherence and considering its implications. If it is not coherent (because it is contradictory or it contains claims that conflict with each other), or if it conflicts with common knowledge, then it is not very credible.