Learner Reviews & Feedback for Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively by Duke University

The professor teaching the course did a good job explaining the concepts behind deductive reasoning. There are however some minor things that annoyed me:

(1) Some of the definitions could have been more formal. Sure, you can describe a category as a "collection of things", but a more rigid approach is useful for the more mathematically inclined.

(2) Wrong answers in the quizzes are not always explained. You just see "You should not have selected this answer." Okay, but WHY NOT? The learning experience would be better if an explanation would always be given.

(3) Some parts are incomplete. For example, the topic on immediate categorical inferences only discusses conversion. It would have been nice to discuss the obversion and contrapositive inference as well. Another example is the lack of the explicit treatment of the biconditional introduction and elimination argument, while the conjunction and disjunction introduction and elimination methods are fully covered.

(4) The time spent on the course is short in comparison to Think Again I. For example, week 3 contains less than an hour's effort. Week 2 is also rather short. Instead of cutting it short, useful concepts such as the square of opposition, which is pretty much the basis of the relations between categorical propositions, could have been discussed.

(5) At the end of one of the lectures, three links are given for further practice. One of the links didn't work.

(6) Some quizzes deal with material that is discussed in later sections.

(7) The exam was unbalanced. One lecture was about addressing the validity of an argument containing an unknown/ foreign word. The exam had many many questions about this (IMHO) less relevant subject.

All in all: the professor gets a 4.5, the content gets a 3, which makes a 4-.

I loved to take this course.

The professor is clever, funny and clear.

However, maybe because of being English my second language, I found difficult to get some issues ( i.e. "speech act" ) or understand the nuances in some exercises regarding "speech act" and" suppressed premises" (particularly in the final quiz, the more difficult questions to me were about the "suppressed premises").

So I would have liked that these harder issues have had found a clearer explanation during the lectures. Also in the final quizzes, it would have been useful giving the reason for the wrong answer (besides explaining the right one).

In fact, the quizzes are useful both for testing our understanding the matter and for learning from our mistakes too. In fact, we learn in a different and deeper way from our mistakes. To explain the reason for the mistakes is a good way to teaching and learning.

Although these notes, the course give enough awareness about our logical and linguistic skill and I'm going to take another one: "Think Again II: How to Reason Deductively". See you soon!

I am sharing my disappointment of the care taken by the lecturer in preparing for his lectures. He is obviously an expert in Logic, and must be very intelligent to hold his academic position - so I have given the course a pass mark.

For example his use of Venn Diagrams was sloppy. I had already worked out that I could use Venn Diagrams before he introduced the idea, and I had sketched unambiguous diagrams to help me visualize the use of quantifiers. The lecturer just used an X to mark the intersection between two sets. This is an imprecise way of showing the intersection, and he could have easily drew different Venn Diagrams that unambiguously showed the various quantifiers. Also why did the lecturer choose to sit in a crappy little room, and not even take time to remove distracting objects from the desk behind him etc. To me he sent a signal that he couldn't even take time to arrange for a appropriate background nor design clear visual aids for his students. There are other Logic courses, and I will try them and hope they are better prepared and more respectful of students.

The material in this course is well presented, though scarce at times. However it has its share of problems :

-little to no interaction from TA's or mentors in the forums

-the quizzes are often out of sync with the lectures

-the final exam has severe problems with questions (form not content).

In more detail, on the final exam, some of the questions don't even contain all the content to answer them. They can request multiple answers but have single question boxes and/or the reverse.

Lucid and Clear conceptions of Deductive Logic.

A must course for every thinking person .

This entire series was informative, engaging, and fun, and the thinking skills taught are so valuable.

amazing!

Really good course, the material and explanations are good, and even in some cases, resolving or understanding some ideas is challenging, you can get the idea with a little practice

Great one!

Excellent !

Amazing course, something utile for everyone.

Excellent!!!!!!

useful

This course sharpened my analytical thinking. Exam was deceptively difficult but worth taking multiple times.

Pros: I found the content very interesting. And there's an analogy with digital design (Boolean Logic) where F=1 and T=0 and so &=AND gate; V=OR gate; biconditional=XOR gate. Pretty useful content. Shorter 4week course. Well explained.

Cons: The exam is very hard. I dont see whats the point of making many & and V and conditional and biconditional together like a huge formula, it takes too much time the calculation. On Venn Diagrams when starts to become shaded and with crosses at the same time (using only 2 categories) I guess is not explained very well on the lectures.

Comparison with MOdule I: I found this module less applicable on the daily-life, more theoretical (but easier).

It's worthy every time anyway.

Great explanations for most subjects. The tests are significantly more complicated than the excercises covered by the lectures.

Would've liked more on the truth table of the conditional.

A good continuation of Think Again I. However, final quiz had lots of bugs in it.

The course is extremely useful, but I found that the instructor is redundant. I often put the video speed on 1.5x.

Still not very clear about Venn Diagram.