Graphs in Chapter 13

Graphs are described to be very useful in Chapter 13. Graphs to me personally are easy. They give me a visual on what I am trying to solve or relate to. It also helps me be able to understand what I'm trying to learn.

Throughout my life, when it came to math, graphs were easy to me. Every time I took a test, I would hope that there would be an example of a graph to help me solve the question.

Graphs can also harm us when it comes to math and concluding facts. Graphs may have information that is easy to access, but depending on the reader, sometimes people can get confused or perceive different type of graphs in different ways.

No matter the reason, graphs are always there to help us in many ways. It is up to us to learn and use them the right and correct way. When it comes to graphs, we need to make sure that we understand them and that we can use them to help us rather than not helping us and making us have the wrong idea of what is to be learned.

Second Major Course Assignment

In our currently/ Second Major course assignment, I learned a lot about emotions and it's effect towards our choices and beliefs.

I learned that emotions can effect our choices in a bad and good level. Emotions affect our lives everyday. The way we feel towards other people helps us treat them by our feelings. I also learned that emotions can affect how we make decisions in life.

It was also useful to learn how people in the advertising business uses pictures and other factors in their advertisements to affect how others feel towards their feelings. By learning this, I think twice every time I see an advertisement that makes me feel guilty, sad, etc.

Through our emotions, we can make good decisions.

When making a decision, I learned that I must have a set of factors that support my claim. So that whenever my claim is questioned, I can back it up with evidence and support to help make my claim seem correct.

Importance of Numbers

Numbers today are very important in our today's society in communications. What we all need to remember is that number never lie. Also, Numbers can be both good and bad. Some may misleading and others may be help to others.

Misleading: Sometimes numbers can be misleading. For example: If I was to state a claim by saying "Over 90% of people in the U.S. uses cell phones. And the other 10% uses pay phones." I then ask "Which one is clearly better?" What is misleading is what did the question mean by "better?" Some questions and claims can be vague or confusing. This is one aspect of numbers that we must know about.

Helpful: Numbers are helpful because it gives us an idea of what we are thinking about. For example: Let's say that my friend said "Many people bought my candy." He could have been more specific by saying "85% of the students bought my candy." By saying those figures of how many people bought his candy, it helped us have a clear picture of how many people really bought his candy.

Arguing by analogy

Arguing by Analogy was one concept in chapter 12 that interested me. This concept by me giving an example. You know how people believe in the saying “ an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This saying basically meant that whatever someone does to you, they must pay the price with equal consequences. By believing in this saying, people now would argue that since the saying applied then, it should apply now. I do not know if I’m doing a good job in explaining this, but people uses not actual facts but past beliefs to argue with analogy.

This interested me because today, people really don’t use common sense. Al they do is believe in what they hear and they automatically believe in its claim. Today we need to make sure that we understand one another and use actual facts rather than believing in what ever we hear.

Pg 195 # 3

3. Find an advertisement that uses an appeal to fear. Is it a good argument?

I remembered watching a commercial that caught my eye. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpKDZDjBWM

In this commercial, they use fear into gaining the viewers attention and at the same make the viewers realize that they need their security in their house. The commercial was some what corny. The burglar finally opens the door but does not go inside the house because he sees the family. In a real life situation, the burglar might have went in either way.

But the argument of the commercial was that: if you want good security for your home, get "Brink's home security." By using this commercial, I believe it was a good argument. Burglary happens all the time and the commercial showed that by making the viewers fear for their own safety. It's a smart tactic but at the same time the right one for the people who created this commercial.

Appeals to Emotion

Appeals to emotion is something that we all have experience. Whenever you use your emotions to judge or to make a decision, you are experiencing this type of appeals to emotion. People today use their emotions to make decisions all the time. For example: You see a commercial about how animals are being treated badly. And they say you can help them by donating money. This may be true but by showing you pictures and videos of animals being mistreated, they use your emotions to try and get you to donate money.

Appeals to emotion is not necessarily a bad thing. It actually helps us understand what we really care about in life and what we chose in our decisions. Our emotions are there to make us feel safe and at the same time help us make good decisions with our hearts. But sometimes, the logical way should be the right decision. Even though you may have felt bad for those animals, you might not have enough money to give and at the same time not have enough money for your self.

Conjunction Claims

Conjunction claims are claims that are true if both sides of the claim is true. If either one of the sides is not true, then the whole claim is false.

example: Dogs bark and also love cats.

This claim may be true in the first part: "Dogs bark", but the second part is false: "(dogs)love cats." Since not all dogs love cats, then the second part is considered to be false. So all in all, the entire claim is false because both sides of the claim need to be true for the whole claim to be true.

I find this very interesting because many people now a days say many things but do not recognize that they would contradict themselves when claiming something. But by knowing this type of claim, it will be able to help me in fixing how I use claims and when I'm talking to another person.

Categorical Claims

What I found interesting was the idea of categorizing claims. I did not realize how broad claims were until I read this part of the book. In this part, they explain that claims can be categorized into these types of claims: "All S are P. Some S is P. No S is P. Some S is not P."

For example:

All doctors are smart.

Some baby is always crying.

No pig is thin.

Some dog's don't chase cats.

We may not use these types of claims day to day, but by re arranging them, they sound like claims that we say in a regular basis.

This is important because by knowing this information, it helps us to understand more about claims. It also helps us to comprehend and realize how we present our claims with these types of categories.

Over all, these types of categories will help you to make claims and at the same time make more sense. If you do not know which category you are using, then you will not know as much of what type of claim you are using.

General Claims

One concept that interested me was "General claims." These type of claims state facts that are in a general/ broad way. For example: All lazy cats prrr. My cat prrrrs. So my cat is lazy. This looks like a valid claim but it does not.

Just because my cat purrrs, that does not mean that it is lazy. These types of claims can give people a wider range of thinking of what kind of claim they are stating. Also, when it comes to general claims, the claim that the other person states can be interpreted in multiple ways.

For example: Brothers who eat alot are fat. My brother eats a lot so he is fat. This may be true but on the other hand, what if some other person's brother eats a lot but is not fat? Just because they eat a lot does not mean that they are necessarily large in size.

Refuting an argument Directly

Refuting an argument directly can be seen by doing these 3 things:

- doubt one of the arguments being argued throughout the conversation.

- Even though you are doubting it, you still believe that the argument is valid.

- But in the end, you still think that the conclusion is false.

By refuting an argument, you are trying to prove that the argument is false.

For example: When my brother asked me what was the meaning of life, he began to think that there was no reason to live because we have no purpose. But I refuted his argument by saying that even though you may think we have no purpose, then why were we created? His argument was refuting his own argument of why we were living.

I believe that God brought us here to serve our lives in this earth to love one another. i believe we are here to live life to the fullest and at the same time serve him until we die and see him in heaven. Sorry if I'm bringing up my religious beliefs into this blog.