In this paradox no contradiction is actually taking place. There is no missing dollar. Adding $27 and $2 (to get $29) in the end is not required at all. The ladies paid $27 out of which $25 went to the restaurant and $2 went to the waiter. Actually we are supposed to subtract $2 from $27 and not add it to $27 . Adding $27 and $2 to get a $29 is just an additional calculation to confuse everyone.
Category: x Archive Exercises
E09: Brief Causal Arguments
In-class Exercise
Consider what you know about your own Topic and Thesis.
Make 5 brief Causal Arguments derived from your own research, as I have done on the Lecture Page “Types of Causal Arguments.”
- Single Cause with a Single Effect (X causes Y)
- Single Cause with Several Effects (X causes Y and Z)
- Several Causes for a Single Effect (Both X and Y cause Z)
- A Causal Chain (X causes Y, which causes Z)
- Causation Fallacy (X does not cause Y)
Use the Reply field below to make your Arguments.
E08 Blind Summary – darnell18
1. True / Reasonable / Bad
2. True / Reasonable / Good
3. False / Unreasonable / Bad
4. False / Unreasonable / Bad
5. False / Unreasonable / Bad
6. False / Unreasonable / Bad
7. False / Unreasonable / Bad
8. True / Reasonable / Good
9. False / Reasonable / Bad
10. False / Reasonable / Good
11. False / Reasonable / Good
12. True / Reasonable / Good
13. False / Unreasonable / Bad
14. False / Unreasonable / Bad
15. True / Reasonable / Good
16. False / Reasonable / Good
17. False / Unreasonable/ Bad
18. False / Reasonable / Good
19. True / Reasonable / Bad
20. True/ Reasonable / Bad
21. False / Reasonable / Bad
22. True / Reasonable / Good
23. True / Reasonable / Bad
24. True / Reasonable / Good
25. True / Reasonable / Good
26. True / Unreasonable / Bad
27. True / Unreasonable / Bad
28. False / Reasonable / Bad
29. True / Unreasonable / Bad
30. True / Unreasonable / Good
31. True / Reasonable / Good
32. True / Reasonable / Good
33. True / Unreasonable / Bad
34. True / Reasonable / Good
35. False / Reasonable / Good
36. True / Reasonable / Bad
37. True / Reasonable / Bad
38. False / Reasonable / Good
39. True / Reasonable / Bad
40. False / Unreasonable / Bad
41. False / Unreasonable / Good
42. True / Reasonable / Bad
43. False / Reasonable / Good
44. False / Reasonable / Bad
45. True / Reasonable / Bad
46. True / Unreasonable / Bad
47. False / Reasonable / Good
48. True / Reasonable / Bad
49. True / Unreasonable / Bad
50. False / Reasonable / Bad
Blind Summary:
This article seems to focus around the main point of mammograms and how successful trained professionals are in conducting them. An overwhelmingly high amount of tumors are missed when mammograms are performed. A raise is the success rate of detecting tumors via mammograms is desired for the near future. Something like this is clearly easier said than done, but lives are at stake and we have the technology to reach the success rate that we are aiming for.
Counterintuitive Predictions – bluedream1997
- Women who find out how many cancers their doctors miss in routine mammograms stop getting mammograms.
True/ unreasonable/ wrong
- Radiologists who perform mammograms are held accountable for the accuracy of their readings.
True/reasonable/ethical
- A doctor who finds hundreds of tumors in a year and a half, but who misses 10, is almost always fired.
False/unreasonable/ethical
- Doctors who read only a few mammograms a month are removed from film-reading teams so that they read none at all.
False/unreasonable/immoral
- Publishing the failure rates of radiologists improves their accuracy to the best the discipline can achieve.
False/reasonable/wrong
- The best technique for improving diagnosis accuracy has been adopted by almost no radiology departments.
False/unreasonable/immoral
- Congress demands that radiologists be held accountable for their accuracy at detecting tumors in mammogram films.
False/unreasonable/immoral
- The 20,000 US doctors who read breast X-rays are trained to do so; their accuracy is known and tested.
False/reasonable/moral
- The medical profession accepts that, to varying degrees, all doctors make the same mistakes.
False/reasonable/wrong
- Doctors who do mammographies follow up with those patients to discover whether their diagnoses were correct.
True/reasonable/moral
- Doctors appreciate knowing whether they missed actual tumors or misread the “shadows and swirls” of a mammogram as a tumor.
True/reasonable/moral
- The “shame” of confronting an incorrect diagnosis is a valuable teaching tool for doctors who diagnose cancers from mammograms.
true/reasonable/moral
- An accuracy rate of 80% in detecting cancers from mammograms is something to brag about.
true/reasonable/wrong
- The best doctor to head a radiology department is a squeamish physician who trained as a lawyer and prefers not to deal with patients “and their blood.”
false/unreasonable/wrong
- Radiology can be tracked well statistically because patients either have tumors or they don’t.
False/reasonable/wrong
- When the director of the radiology department discovers a way to improve the accuracy of cancer diagnoses, his method is immediately embraced by hospital administrators.
false/reasonable/moral
- When New York hospitals began to publish their surgeons’ heart surgery successes and failures, the death rate fell by 40%.
True/reasonable/moral
- The falling death rate meant that heart surgeons were doing more careful work.
false/reasonable/right
- Hospitals that reduce their false diagnoses proudly advertise that they “make 20% fewer errors” than their competitors.
True/reasonable/unethical
- Publishing the error rates of mammography radiologists results in an uncertain but significant number of cancer deaths in women who avoid testing.
true/reasonable/wrong
- A radiologist who is known to have missed a tumor is likely to have missed a dozen out of 3000 he declared to be tumor-free.
true/reasonable/wrong
- Out of those 3000, when 250 were scanned again, and 30 were biopsied, 10 were found to have cancers he had missed.
true/reasonable/wrong
- Finding those 10 cancers was reported as a front-page medical scandal instead of a triumph of an enlightened new technique for avoiding missed diagnoses.
false/reasonable/moral
- Many of the 250 women who were told they needed followup were angry.
true/unreasonable/unethical
- Of the ten whose cancers were missed by the first doctor but discovered in followup screenings, most sued the hospital for malpractice.
true/reasonable/moral
- The doctor who missed the 10 tumors felt he had been treated unfairly, that only 3 of the cancers could be blamed on him, and that his error rate was acceptable.
false/unreasonable/unethical
- After being fired, he was hired as a fill-in radiologist in five states bordering North Carolina.
true/reasonable/unethical
- The radiologists on the terminated doctor’s team supported him, not the hospital, and resent having their work scrutinized and their failure rates published.
true/unreasonable/unethical
- While some doctors read 14,000 films a year, and others fewer than 500, failure rates are very similar.
true/reasonable/wrong
- Doctors who read just 500 films a year get re-assigned to other work since their sample size is too small to determine their accuracy.
true/reasonable/ethical
- Doctors who are “fired” from film reading based on low volume are relieved to have the diagnostic responsibility taken from them.
false/unreasonable/wrong
- Doctors would rather bring a patient back for a second look or a biopsy than miss a tumor.
true/reasonable/ethical
- Doctors are much happier to find evidence on the film of a cancer that has “been around for awhile.”
false/unreasonable/unethical
- Routinely experiencing the shame of missed diagnoses in tests every four months builds confidence in radiologists.
false/unreasonable/wrong
- Most hospitals send out lists of actual missed tumors or “false negatives” to their radiologists every year so they can study the films they misinterpreted.
true/reasonable/ethical
- The Kaiser Permanente department has learned to detect various “presentations” of tumors on film by studying films of actual missed tumors after the fact.
true/reasonable/ethical
- In North Carolina, for every two cancers radiologists find, they miss one.
true/unreasonable/unethical
- If the results at Kaiser Permanente were replicated nationwide, better than 80% of cancers would be found and 10,000 more cancers would be correctly detected each year.
true/reasonable/ethical
- False positives are easy to track, but almost nobody tracks false negatives (missed tumors that show up in later mammograms).
false/unreasonable/wrong
- There is no routine followup for women who, on the basis of their mammograms, are determined to be tumor free.
false/reasonable/unethical
- Holding radiologists to a higher standard of competency results in reduced access to quality care.
true/unreasonable/unethical
- Making failure rates public increases the likelihood of malpractice claims, which in turn drives up insurance rates, which in turn drives good doctors from the field.
true/reasonable/unethical
- Having two doctors instead of one review every film improves accuracy and drives down costs.
false/unreasonable/ethical
- A nationwide 70% effectiveness rate is considered the best that can be achieved practically and politically.
false/unreasonable/unethical
- Government oversight of physician performance to standardize techniques nationally has actually reduced accuracy.
true/unreasonable/unethical
- Dr. Adcock, who improved effectiveness in his radiology department by 25%, took himself off the team when his volume dropped.
true/reasonable/ethical
- The most conscientious doctors, who agonize over the presence or absence of tumors on every film, are by far the most effective.
false/reasonable/ethical
- When they have a choice, women are best served by the doctors who send the largest percentage of women for biopsies because they miss the fewest cancers.
false/reasonable/ethical
- The best indicator of whether a doctor is competent to read mammograms is the number of times she’s been sued.
false/unreasonable/unethical
- A good day for mammograms is Mother’s Day, when many clinics offer free or discounted exams.
false/reasonable/wrong
Blind Summary:
It is quite apparent that this article is focused on the practice, experience, ethics, and accuracy of doctors who provide mammograms for potential cancer victims, and that it also touches upon the experience from the point of view of women who undergo the emotional process.
Polio Notes- Princess272
Humanity could not get rid of polio even if it tried, and humanity has tried, multiple times. Every time the numbers for diseases such as polio or other diseases that can be vaccinated for diminishes to a minute number, humanity slows down its witch hunt for the disease considerably. Low numbers of individuals with a disease does not indicate being complacent is okay. The opposite is reality. If something needs to be eradicated, destroying most of it by definition is not eradicating it. This is the college equivalent of expecting a 100 percent on an exam that was never finished or handed in. Humanity fails to cross it’s T’s and neglects to dot it’s I’s when dealing with diseases such as polio or measles. For this simple fact, polio will not be eradicated any time in the foreseeable future.
Safer Saws – anonymous
1A. Manufacturers
“When you’re cutting wood, if you accidentally run your hand into the blade, it’ll stop it so quickly that you just get a little nick instead of maybe taking some fingers off.”
1B. An ordinary saw would cause severe injury if your hand touched the blade, but this saw is different. It can save your fingers.
1C. This statement is factual, the blade will stop when touched by your finger.
1D. The statement by itself has no factual evidence and is casual at best. The only reason I know the sentence is factual is from the video that is part of the article.
2A. Customers
“To hold Bosch liable for not making a bad business decision that would cost them lots of money seems a bit unreasonable if not ludicrous.”
2B. Pinning the blame on Bosch for not incorporating this new technology is not fair considering it would be detrimental to their business.
2C. This a statement of opinion concluding holding Bosch liable is “unreasonable.”
2D. While poorly worded and not quite a rhetoric this is an opinion. The only problem I have with this statement is the jump from “a bit unreasonable” to “ludicrous”. The point he is trying to make becomes convoluted and a lot less stable when he tries to equate unreasonable to ludicrous.
3A. Industry Spokespeople
“SawStop is currently available in the marketplace to any consumer who chooses to purchase it.”
3B. SawStop can be purchased by any customer who wants it.
3C. This is a factual opinion, stating that anyone who feels the need to purchase this additional safety measure.
3D. This sentence is very subtly hinting at the fact that if the consumer wants to get the additional safety of SawStop it is “available” for purchase.
4A. Consumer Safety Advocates
“As I have stated many times before—and as is now reflected in the agency’s new strategic plan—one of the CPSC’s primary goals is a commitment to prevention.”
4B. The CPSC has a strategic plan which includes the goal to prevent future table saw injuries.
4C. This is a well versed clinical response to the safety advocates core values and goals.
4D. They claim they have gone over this many times and it should be common knowledge. Although they go on to say the agency is incorporating a “new strategic plan”. Is this new plan different than the original? At the end they do instill their primary goal is still the same, “commitment to prevention.”
5A. Injured Plaintiffs
“Wec says his permanent and “traumatic injury” could have been prevented if Bosch and its competitors had not rejected and fought against the safety technology.”
5B. This is a really opinionated statement, quoting “Wec”, saying his injury could of been prevented if only Bosch had not denied the new technology.
5C. This is a opinionated view from a victim that is obviously very biased. It sets out to demonize the big corporation that is “Bosch”.
5D. This claim is paraphrased and can be easily disputed. It gives off a personal and clearly biased vibe, and to me seems almost phony. There is no evidence and no face to put on the injury so for all intensive purposes its a fairy-tale.
6A. Personal Injury Lawyers
“Although SawStop safety technology has been around for more than ten years, not all table saw manufacturers have adopted it.”
6B. Although SawStop safety technology has been around for more than ten years, not all table saw manufacturers have adopted it.
6C. This is a clear cut statement verbalizing how long SawStop has been around and letting the reader know not everyone has adopted it.
6D. Not the most persuasive statement ever made but what it lacks in details it makes up for in simplicity. Sometimes a clear cut statement can be more influential than a million different metaphors and statistics.
7A. Government Officials
“The benefits of improving table saw safety clearly outweigh the costs.”
7B. There are many benefits of improving the table saw, cost should not be an issue.
7C. This is a opinionated claim. It insinuates that incorporating this new technology is a situation of morality. We shouldn’t negotiate price when it can save someone from traumatic injury.
7D. Again, not very well defined in the wording and reasoning. What are the benefits? What are the costs?
8A. News Reporters
“But as well as the technology works, the major tool companies have failed to put this kind of device on any of their table saws — even eight years after Gass offered to license it to them.”
8B. This technology is proven to work yet major tool companies refuse to use it, even after Gass offered them the license.
8C. This is another opinionated claim backed by some fact. The blame is directed toward these tool companies suggesting they are neglectful for not accepting the license.
8D. This statement is persuasive enough but gives no statistics to help convince the reader the companies are indeed neglectful. “Failed” is a strong word and was used pretty tactfully in this claim.
Polio Notes- brobeanfarms
-More than 100 children are exposed to Polio and they can spread it, which a great solution is more and more adults and children should take vaccination.
-The disease targets primarily children younger than 5 and can lead to partial and sometimes fatal paralysis.
-Polio requires more vaccination of children between the ages of 0-5 due to their weak immune system.
-There is a more expensive version of the vaccination used in the United States that has zero chance of causing polio. It is in the dollars rather than cents.
-The vaccine is a liquid that is placed of a child’s tongue. The vaccine will go into the body and attack bad bacteria. Taking it about three times will make it 100% effective.
-Nigeria is one of the few places in the world where polio exists.
-If individuals received vaccines regularly, these diseases would not spread as fast. There needs to more effort for this to not happen again.
–
Open Strong – nyctime7
The unforgivable acts of police brutality, should sometimes be forgiven. Outrage sparked from cop killings is misdirected, and in turn makes matters worse. It’s easy to point fingers and call police racist, but is it their fault? Under various circumstances, any human being is capable of committing acts of violence. Mainstream media’s constant portrayal of “good” and “bad” people, conditions people into developing a bias towards certain groups of people. Whether or not said bias is realized, it can very well influence a persons actions in every day life. Since police officers are still normal humans, it’s reasonable to assume that their inherent bias can one day come to fruition. Movements like “Black Lives Matter” only shed light on a piece of a larger problem, that law enforcement needs to be rebuilt.
E06: Safer Saws- brobeanfarms
- Manufacturers
- Customers
- Consumer Safety Advocates
- Injured Plaintiffs
- Personal Injury Lawyers
- News Reporters
- Power Tool Product Reviewers
- Amputees
1a. “Our saws, besides being the highest quality and best featured saws in their market segments, feature the ability to detect contact with skin and stop the blade in less than 5 milliseconds.”
1b. The manufacturer is claiming that their saw is without an unreasonable doubt the best saw on the market, and now with the feature to detect contact on the skin, it has revolutionized this field.
1c. The claim is opinionated along with factual. The option is that their saws are the best on the market and the fact is the technology to detect contact on the skin.
1d. Due to the opinion, the manufacturer is obviously going to promote their saw. The technology however is factual and very beneficial. The manufacturer wants everyone who owns power saws to own this new technology as well.
2a. “To hold Bosch liable for not making a bad business decision that would cost them lots of money seems a bit unreasonable if not ludicrous.”
2b. Customers believe that manufacturers would lose a great amount of money for buying this technology. The amount of money spent would not be worth it when it comes to sales.
2c. This type of claim is 100% opinionated and could be debated as factual as well. The opinion is the loss of money but that could also be factual because the technology is expensive and the manufacturer already profits greatly on sales.
2d. This claim is accurate based on the opinion and fact because The technology is very costly.
3a.
3b.
3c.
3d.
3e.
4a. “Approximately 40,000 Americans go to hospital emergency rooms every year with injuries sustained while operating table saws. About 4,000 of those injuries – or more than 10 every day – are amputations.”
4b. The quote from the injured plaintiff is true and factual. It goes in depth on how many individuals are injured due to table saws and implies that changes must be made.
4c. This is a factual claim because it gives statistics on the injuries caused by table saws annually.
4d. These claims are accurate, due to the statistics. It gives a visual on the problem with table saws and the injuries that it causes. Based on these statistics, injuries would most likely greatly decrease with the implication of the new technology.
5a.
5b.
5c.
5d.
E03: Critical Reading- brobeanfarms
“You can hear the cat padding around. The air conditioner whooshes, a clock ticks.”
Vivid descriptions is what helps visualize a scene and bring everything to life for the reader. Visualization is key. Painting a visualized picture from words makes the setting and greatly helps the reader.
“Her nose starts running she’s so pissed, and there she is standing in a CVS, snotty and deaf with rage, like some kind of maniac, because a tiny elderly woman needs an extra minute to pay for her dish soap or whatever.”
The attitude of the writer helps describe the feeling and attitude of the tiny elderly women. Emotion helps set the attitude of the setting, and gives the reader emotion as well.
“As with most psychiatric diagnoses, there are no measurable objective biological characteristics to identify it. Doctors have to go on hunches and symptomology rather than definitive evidence.”
The reason’s for PTSD is pretty clear. Doctor’s can understand how it may have came about from past experiences that may be traumatizing, but the problem is what exactly affects the brain? Is this a real disease? Or is it all mentally on the replaying of the past traumatizing experiences over and over again? Doctor’s therefore are left to blindly diagnose based on symptoms rather than definitive evidence.
“Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.”
Why PTSD tortures some trauma victims is hard to pin point. Doctor’s obviously know why but they don’t know why it affects some and not others. The way the brain works is mysterious which leads to theories that is could be coded proteins or amygdala because the is not evidence backing PTSD up.
Rowan Counterintuitive 