Exam 10: Become a Critical Thinker and Creative Problem Solver

Ari is an accounting major and loves to work with numbers and data.He is a logical/mathematical learner and a critical thinker.He'd like to enhance his creative thinking skills.He could do this best by keeping a daily journal of this thoughts and learning.

When developing evaluation skills, it is helpful to be open to suggestions from your study group and instructors.

"All men are mortal.Harold is a man.Therefore Harold is mortal." This is an example of:

Karl is faced with a plumbing problem he must solve.It would be helpful to begin to solve the problem by:

Choose a problem at home, work, school or in your community you would like to solve.Is it a daily problem or a once in a lifetime problem? What is known? What is not known? What are possible choices? What are the pros and cons of each solution? Rank-order the solutions.Choose a solution.What might happen?

Jaqueline has worked on solving the same statistics problem for an hour and is frustrated she cannot solve it.Right now what she needs most is:

To overcome math or science anxiety, it is important to:

Jake seems to be perpetually late for class.He sets his alarm but keeps hitting the snooze button.It is his statistics class, and he is overwhelmed with the course.He is never more than 5 minutes late, but he just can't seem to motivate himself to get there on time.Use the 4 steps of the problem solving process to help him devise a plan to arrive to class on time.

Kathy's record store has a good reputation for buying and selling used records.She's always relied on both young and old customers; however, as the years go and music has gone digital, she is losing the youth market.She keeps a daily journal of ideas about how to boost sales in the record shop.She has decided to take action on some of her ideas beginning with her favorite, using social networking to raise awareness of the 'cool' factor of vinyl records and the ambiance of her store.Kathy has developed an action plan and is ready to implement her plan.Kathy should pause to avoid errors in judgment before implementing her plan.

In order to apply new information, you must first be able to synthesize it.

Kara is a creative person.Her goal is to be a website designer, so she has enrolled a computer science major.Looking through the textbook for her required Calculus I course, she is overwhelmed by the amount of content that will be covered in the semester.She now wonders if she should switch to a less math-intensive major.Given what you have learned about critical thinking, what is the best advice for this student?