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Back to Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
1,347 ratings

About the Course

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....

Top reviews

JM

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.

MK

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.

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51 - 75 of 314 Reviews for Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age

By Damawa.l J

Feb 16, 2021

This course is amazing! It exposed me to new concepts out of my comfort zone and deepened my knowledge on psychological & statistical subjects. Once you push through and allow yourself to understand the material you realize how important it is and can be used in real life situations.

By Narita R

Jan 10, 2019

Excellent course. Everyone should know the basics of the critical thinking especially in today's world when most of our decisions are influenced by news and social media. This course gives a new perspective of thinking critically about the big and small decisions in our lives.

By Andre G

Dec 27, 2022

Changes are constant. Critical Thinking is more important in the age of information overloading and AI-automatization technologies. Your brain is a super complex muscle: no train, no gain. Work on complexity of your thought! This post was created without help of GPT3 😁

By Domantas Ž

Nov 1, 2020

Very light and easy course to deepen your understanding about critical thinking in the real world. Easy to get into, assignments are very easy, but the lectures have a lot of useful information and are very accessible to any people with any educational background.

By Alexandre Z R

Apr 25, 2017

This course was very successful in bring to light many concepts we need to carefully understand to don't evaluate everyday problems. It's based on explanatory examples that are much more acessible to everyone that complex mathematical notations. It worth to do.

By Sharena R

Jun 10, 2017

Thanks, Dr. Nisbett! This was my first Coursera course, and I am happy that I came across it when I was planning on reading the book "Mindware" anyway. I enjoyed the book very much and took this course as a companion to the book, rather than vice versa.

By Belinda K

May 13, 2021

Very informative, and even as a psychology student who has encountered many of these statistical and cognitive concepts before, I feel like I have learned a lot of useful skills that can be applied in everyday decision-making scenarios.

By Deepali D

Apr 23, 2020

Extremely insightful with great examples and applicability in daily life. Special take away for me is the statistics on mean and deviation from the mean and probability also the standard 2 *2 table to best judge based on data available.

By LOO S T

Jan 2, 2022

A course highly recommended for any students on this information age. What we truly need to critically process all the information given to us each day. Thank you Professor Nisbett. Enjoyed the course and the book.

By Arya D

Apr 9, 2020

The course and the instructor is really amazing. The knowledge gained through this course can be applied to academic as well as personal life which is very impressive about this course. Thank you Mr. Richard Nisbett!

By Aravindh C

Sep 27, 2018

Stick through the entire course and you'll definitely be better at making decisions. The first videos I saw I was a bit bored, but the questions, simulations etc was nourishment to the mind. Thank you, Prof Nisbett.

By Christopher S M

May 11, 2018

Loved the course! It is a comprehensive review for those of us working with data every day. The pace of the course provides a comprehensive refresher of the fundamentals of critical thinking, logic, and reasoning.

By 지니어스

Feb 8, 2022

It was a great lecture. I learned how important statistical thinking is in choosing, making decisions, and solving problems. There is a mindware book as a reference, so I received a lot of help reading it together.

By Seweryn M

Apr 8, 2020

An interesting and engaging course. Extends the picture of many issues. Comprehensive and optimal in terms of time and content. I recommend to everyone, regardless of the profession. Sympathetic lecturer. Regards!

By Anh G

Aug 22, 2020

This course is great. I've found the way to think about many problems around me, such as what the best thing to buy when I have many choices. The teacher has many example for me to understand the course easier.

By Phương K

May 15, 2023

this course has a lot of specific examples for each tools of thinking; should be a must taken course for anyone who wants to learn how to think about the world. I love and enjoy every lesson in this course!

By Puff

Nov 4, 2020

Its good introduction to critical thinking,doesnt teaches you everything but definitely motivates you to learn more about the material,and there is no boring stuff so you will probably end up learning more.

By Heber H B M

Jul 29, 2019

Hace tiempo que venía buscando un curso sobre pensamiento crítico. Este curso es muy bueno, no sólo porque provee de herramientas para razonar, sino también por las explicaciones y los ejemplos que se dan.

By Dan

Sep 19, 2019

This course was very useful. It went over concepts which come in handy when we are sifting through the bombardment of information in our current age which we need to process to arrive at sound decisions.

By Елена В

Sep 4, 2020

This course will be very useful both in school and in life. Concentration of super-useful ideas and knowledge that can greatly simplify our life and improve the quality of our judgments and decisions.

By Eija B

Sep 4, 2021

I learned a lot from this course, concepts that I will be able to use in my everyday life to filter information better. Thank you Professor and University of Michigan!

By Taufiq F A

Oct 10, 2021

I benefited a lot from this course because it is easy to convey the information, really an achievement that deserves thanks to the organizers of this training course

By Sucharita R P

Jul 10, 2017

Excellent course. I learnt a lot from this course. It has changed my thinking and I hope to be able to use it in making decisions both at home as well as at work.

By Zoulfia T

Sep 11, 2021

That was great, I'll need to come back to this course after because there is a lot of things and I need to review it. I recommend this course to everyone!!!!

By Rita J

Mar 22, 2021

This was an excellent course and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to further their understanding of critical thinking for the new information age.