This Summer I Learned....

Over the course of the summer I learned a lot about thinking critically. What I found most interesting over all the concepts that we have covered this summer is the ways in which people manipulate numbers to have ambiguous meanings. For example the use of general terms like "some" or using percentages as proof for something that has not been proven.

EX:

Some of the workers at Jamba Juice know how to make all of the smoothies.

This example is too vague because it does not show how many of the workers know how to make all of the smoothies. This could mean that only a couple of the workers know how to make all the smoothies or almost all of them know how. This claim is too general and should be made more specific.

To better this example you could say that:

80% of the workers at Jamba Juice know how to make all of the smoothies.

However, this claim is also very general. Someone who is not thinking critically would probably fall into this trap just because of the use of numbers; but someone who is thinking critically would evaluate the claim as being ambiguous. This statement could mean that 80% of all Jamba Juice workers or 80% of the workers at a particular store. This is a matter of 10 vs 1000. 80% of 10 and 80% of 1000 is a big difference.