New start date: April 21

Most adults consider themselves educated and rational consumers of information. Yet many commonly accept misleading or immaterial statements and contrived statistics or graphics as “truths” that then become the basis of personal belief sets. This is especially a reality in both the political and commercial spheres. The most pernicious and most manipulative marketing technique is the use of half-truths. Of half-truths, Mark Twain spoke eloquently that “A half-truth Is The Most Cowardly Of Lies” since they cannot be disproven as fact but are invariably irrelevant to the underlying question.

This course examines the truths that we believe as self-evident to see if they are not a partial product of the fears and instincts inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In addition, how words or statements are communicated in ways that appear to be substantive factual information but contribute no meaningful insight will be discussed.

Another aspect critical to finding the “wheat from the chaff” in the storm of received information is the ability to recognize valid and meaningful conclusions when data is presented graphically or statistically. Modern human beings out of necessity accept simple quick information characterizations developed by others such as charts or simple statistics. However, how do we know if that assessment or characterization is “accurate”? This course presents evaluation processes and clues that may aid in deciding their validity.