Back to Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age
University of Michigan

Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age

Most professions these days require more than general intelligence. They require in addition the ability to collect, analyze and think about data. Personal life is enriched when these same skills are applied to problems in everyday life involving judgment and choice. This course presents 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. Concepts are defined briefly and breezily and then applied to many examples drawn from business, the media and everyday life. What kinds of things will you learn? Why it’s usually a mistake to interview people for a job. Why it’s highly unlikely that, if your first meal in a new restaurant is excellent, you will find the next meal to be as good. Why economists regularly walk out of movies and leave restaurant food uneaten. Why getting your picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated usually means your next season is going to be a disappointment. Why you might not have a disease even though you’ve tested positive for it. Why you’re never going to know how coffee affects you unless you conduct an experiment in which you flip a coin to determine whether you will have coffee on a given day. Why it might be a mistake to use an office in a building you own as opposed to having your office in someone else’s building. Why you should never keep a stock that’s going down in hopes that it will go back up and prevent you from losing any of your initial investment. Why it is that a great deal of health information presented in the media is misinformation.

Status: Adaptability
Status: Research Design
BeginnerCourse13 hours

Featured reviews

JI

5.0Reviewed Oct 9, 2017

The professor is likable, the content is engaging and accessible, and the lessons are applicable to everyone's daily life in both personal and professional situations.

MK

5.0Reviewed Apr 7, 2020

Anyone beginner can take this course and be 100 times more understanding of information via any media while also perhaps understanding what is the best choice in some give scenario IRL.

SA

5.0Reviewed May 13, 2018

The activities and lectures were really interesting. This is the first course that i started and completed on Coursera. So I'm super excited.

JM

5.0Reviewed Jul 28, 2019

This course is great! I recommend it to anyone who wants to be able to reason better and have more capabilities in making decisions. Thank you Dr. Nisbett and Coursera for providing this course.

WS

5.0Reviewed Apr 9, 2021

The professor was excellent and the whole course was very much easy to follow. I enjoyed the exercises and the information learned was precise.

SS

5.0Reviewed May 3, 2020

Excellent combination of logic, statistics and psychology which is the minimum amount of understandings you need to make accurate business decisions.

TJ

5.0Reviewed Sep 12, 2018

A pretty crucial look at the common fallacies and biases that influence the way we absorb information. This is highly recommended to all people.

HH

5.0Reviewed Sep 10, 2020

Awesome course! Definitely teaches about critical thinking. Uses case studies and examples which are fun :) Some maths too so good for math lovers :D

SG

5.0Reviewed Jul 20, 2017

I really love the course, and I have recommended it to all my friends. The course helped me to think more clearly and avoid cognitive biases.

MP

5.0Reviewed Sep 19, 2019

This has been most excellent. I found the baserate false alarm rate examples particularly useful and am inspired to use this in a new context

VV

5.0Reviewed Sep 30, 2020

I thoroughly enjoyed the course. It was very well designed with lot of examples to easily understand the topics in the course. Thanks to the Professor.

EC

5.0Reviewed Jun 16, 2020

I have learned a lot and I am inspired to learn more. Thank you so much, University of Michigan, Coursera, and to the very insightful Professor Nesbitt.

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