THINK! Session #11, Quantitative Literacy

HumanistsMN's mission includes a commitment to "educate the public about . . . the importance of science, reason, and critical thinking." Accordingly, we are again offering THINK!, a course intended to improve participants' thinking skills. This course is adapted from material Jerry Smith taught to upper-level undergraduate students at the University of Northern Iowa. It has been offered to HMN participants on several occasions, most recently in 2019-20. The course consists of seventeen sessions, one or two of which will be offered each month on Saturday afternoons.

Continuing our study of inquiry, this session of the course looks at quantitative literacy, also known as statistical literacy or numeracy, trying to improve our ability to understand and use statistics and other numerical information. Among the topics to be covered are: risk and uncertainty; various types of probability; measurement; data visualization; descriptive statistics; populations and sampling; inferential statistics; and causal inference. Various cases and exercises will be used to test and develop participants' quantitative skills. It's quite probable that you will leave this session with justifiably increased confidence in your ability to understand and employ statistical information.

While the course material is cumulative--each session draws on its predecessors--participants can still benefit if they were unable to attend earlier sessions. The course is taught using PowerPoint presentations; copies of the presentations for previous sessions can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1e416ZnchBVWzOt0WhWkEvo-MU18CR1v7

Although a lot of material will be covered, each session includes considerable time for attendee participation, as by identifying thinking mistakes, analyzing arguments, and responding to discussion questions.

So, if you've wanted to develop new thinking skills (or refurbish old ones), do come! Interested participants are welcome to join us after the event for dinner at Vina, a moderately priced Vietnamese restaurant located at 756 Cleveland Avenue South, a few blocks from the library.

This event is sponsored by HumanistsMN. If you are not already a member, please consider joining to help us cover our costs and build the humanist movement. Sign up at humanistsmn.org.