Essay 1f (Your Name): "Your Title Here"
A Recommendation: If you didn't read the chapter about using quotations in They Say / I Say last week, or you didn't read it carefully, I strongly suggest you read it this weekend. The templates on 46頁 are good, and the general explanation for how and why to use quotations is good too. (The one thing they don't tell you is how to change the grammar of the quoted sentences to fit better with the grammar of your sentences, but that's something I can help you with later this semester.) I think all of you could benefit by using a bit more quotation to establish your theys; as the chapter says, it makes it seem less like you're just having a dialogue with yourself.
A Clarification: I hope this was evident in the way that I've discussed the essay over the past two weeks, but this is my order of priority in judging your grade.
High Importance... organization of ideas, sequencing of sentences and paragraphs, logical coherence, orchestrating dialogue of arguments
Middle Importance... philosophical insight, research quality
Low Importance... style, correct usage of words and word forms, grammatical mechanics, etc.
Of course I cannot say that philosophical insight and research quality have no importance, because your paper must present a philosophical argument of a kind, and weigh various "they" arguments, the more specific the better. And I cannot say that style, mechanics, usage, and so forth have no importance, because I must be able to read your paper and understand what you say. But my major focus for this essay, and for the class in general, is helping you learn how to construct arguments at the sentence and paragraph level.
Read: They Say / I Say 55-67頁 (Read this as soon as you can... I think you will find the templates helpful for the final draft of your essay!)
Read: Blink 3-47頁
17 (Peter). Moneyball is clearly better than traditional baseball scouting for analyzing certain phenomena. But it leaves many areas of baseball un-analyzed, and some of these areas will therefore require traditional scouting methods to complement quantitative analysis methods
(at least until better Q.A. methods are developed). Give a couple of examples of scouting techniques in Lewis' book that sound rather like Gladwell-style "thin-slicing." (But don't repeat the "Billy at his trading desk" example.)18 (Jenny & Aaron answer separately). Describe one personal experience in which you used thin-slicing successfully, and another in which you used thin-slicing unsuccessfully.
19 (Cathy & Catherine answer separately). Describe a (non-baseball!) situation/phenomenon for which the thin-slicing technique in Blink would never/rarely work. Use one of the disagreeing templates on They Say / I Say 60頁, or one of the "yes, but..."templates" on 65頁.
20 (Ting). In our discussions of Moneyball, we used "quantitative" to describe the method of broad-sample empirical analysis, like Billy Beane uses for baseball, and "qualitative" to describe other methods of deriving knowledge. But in fact there are many different types of qualitative methods. We dismissed some of them as being purely stupid or self-protective, but some may actually be useful in certain situations, especially those where reliable quantitative methods are unavailable. I will list a few, and you need to take them one by one and explain whether or not they could be seen as thin-slicing. In other words, what we are trying to do is see if all cases of intuition (that are not nonsense) can be covered by the thin-slicing concept, or if there might also be other reliable types of intuition: a) intuition from long experience, b) intuition from expert/technical/specialized knowledge, c) intuition from "common sense" or popular consensus, d) intuition from tradition, e) intuition from perception of beauty or ordered pattern, f) intuition from religious/mystical/supernatural/transcendental experience.
21 (Esther). I want you to do a miniature version of the SPAFF analysis discussed in the first chapter of Blink. Here's what to do. First, you need two friends who are dating to be your volunteers. Second, you need either a video camera or a webcam with a recording feature. You need to record one of the two faces for 5 minutes, and the other of the two faces for 5 minutes. (It might have to be a different five minutes depending on your camera set-up.) Don't start the recording right away... give them a neutral topic to get them warmed up, like what food they love to eat or something like that. When you are ready to gather your "data," ask them one or both of the two key questions Gottman uses (what do 你們 tend to fight about? and how did 你們 meet?). A full explanation of the SPAFF codes is here, and a shorter list of codes here. But for your analysis, you only need to use three codes that we will call by colors: green for positive or neutral emotion, yellow for weakly or moderately negative emotion, and red for strongly negative emotion. Make a chart that divides the 10 data minutes (5+5) into 20 segments of 30 seconds each, and analyze by marking a color for each segment depending on the most negative emotion that you observe during this segment. (So even a single moment of yellow within a 30 second period that was mostly green would still count as yellow.) Bring a copy of the video to class if you can.
Hello I'm Aaron Chen:
ReplyDeleteI will describe my unsuccessful experience first. Wehn I was in freshman year, I joined a club. When people introduced themselves, a girl disturbed others many times. She was annoyed and her voice would shake in hysteria. Because of this experience, I asserted that she was a vexing person. However, one day, when everybody chatted with each other, she said sorry to everybody for always shouting to others and said that she didn't know how to get along with other and how to express herself. I realized she was not so bad. I think I am too casual to judge a person at that time!
I often judge a person by observing his or her attitude toward parents. In my opinion, by analyzing people's reflections toward parents, I can find a lot of things such as whether he or she is patient or not. I think this is a useful way to observe a person.
"The power of thin slicing" is that as human beings, sometimes we are capable of making sense of situations based on the thinnest slice of experience.
ReplyDeleteIn Lewis's book, the scouts used to look for the players who have great speed or strong arms. If the scouts see a player have great speed, they might think that he is good at stealing and catching. If the scouts see a player own a pair of strong arms, they might think that he can pass the ball fastly and precisely, or bat a ball far and high.
Plus, if you are good at other sports, like basketball and football, the scouts will assert that you must be also good at baseball.
18 (Jenny)
ReplyDeleteOne personal experience in which you used thin-slicing successfully:
In my high school, several classmates I were assigned in one group and had to write papers on a same book. I proposed to read "The Dream of the Red Chamber" while my friends wanted to choose a translation book. I forgot the name of it, but I remember that I didn't like the name and that's why I didn't want to read it. Eventually we made a agreement to read that book, but it turned out to be a terrible novel to me. I couldn't figure out what the author wrote. I can never forget this experience because the terrible book cost me NT$500 which is my one-month allowance...
Another in which you used thin-slicing unsuccessfully:
In my high school class, there was a beautiful girl who was somewhat famous and popular because she wanted to become a TV star and did go on a TV show once. When I saw her for the first time, I was amazed by her beauty and thought her smile and behaviors were charming and wanted to make friends with her. But as the time goes by, I found she was a weirdo and big liar. She kept talking about her poor and sad growing background to everyone to get others' compassion for her. But the strange point was that everything she talked about to everyone was totally different! And I found many classmates were also fooled by her appearance at first, just like me. Maybe sometimes my thin-slicing ability doesn't work so well.
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ReplyDeleteBy focusing on the accuracy of thin slicing, the author overlooks the deeper problem of what kind of foundation we rely on and judge things by. I do not deny that some little element could help us to analyze people or issues, but the accuracy isn’t definitely positive compared with knowing the person or issue deeper. In order to demonstrate my position, I show the “voice” example to clarify the ambiguous question. When we are listening to the broadcast, we usually associate the deep and suppressed voice with reliable personality, and when hearing loud and sonorous sound, we may consider this host to be a hospitable and enthusiastic person. However, their voices do not necessarily correspond to their personalities, and maybe they switch their voices just for catering to audience. Therefore, I assert that the thin slicing is not so useful as the author extols.
ReplyDeleteQ.19
ReplyDeleteThough I concede that thin slicing can tell us many things with high accuracy, I still insist that there are many things can not be told. For example. Many people believe that one's ugly handwriting is related to his sloppy attitude. However, he is probably have a different thought of handwriting. Some of my friends just think that words are written to be recognized, instead of being admired. Because it always takes more time to write beautifully,they just want to be realistic in writing. Therefore, I think thin slicing can't be 100% correct.
Well firstly I should say that I don't quite understand how this "thin-slicing concept" works...maybe it always goes unconsciously so it can't be anaylzed? Anyway, this is my theory of thin-slicing: We get "key points/fists" from those we're analyzing, and consult the "database" in our minds for explanation and conclusion. Here with "database" I mean a bunch of information we've acquired/accumulated...etc. So for example, in Gottman's experiment, he found out that contempt is one significant issue in marriage. From his social experience with people he knew contempt is a negative cause in human interaction, and from research results he proved that contempt is the most important one. Thus, "social experience" and "research" are two databases to indicate "contempt" as a necessary slice and to give "contempt" its meaning in the analysis.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, in this sense,
a) Intuition from long experience can be seen as thin-slicing. The experience can tell us what are the most important elements in an analysis, and it is also the database from which we can extract consciously or unconsciously.
b) Specialized knowledge is also a very strong database (maybe in modern sense) for thin-slicing. After all, it involves some scientific and deliberate studies or training. And from another point of view, expert ideas actually come from a series of experience in a certain field.
c) Common sense is a tricky one, but I think it is also the database of thin-slicing. We can't deny that we somehow are influenced and stereotyped by this "common sense." So if thin-slicing is based on people's subconscious mind-working, then we must apply some ideas of common sense subconsciously. Though this common sense thin-slicing may not always work in different cultures or societies (ex. cultural shock)?
d) I think tradition as a database of thin-slicing is not as convincible as the other three, because I'm not quite sure how many people would follow/believe traditional values in modern times. Maybe the intuition from tradition can only be used
in some cases...? I don't know.
e) I think the appreciation of beauty and order seems to be a more biological function; there are numerous examples exist in the nature. So I agree with such intuition as one kind of thin-slicing. In Blink it also says that by visiting the dorm rooms in person, the observers can predict three from five good qualities of employees.
f) My theory of religious experience is similar to common sense. If people are under huge influence of religion/mystical ideas, then these experiences somehow merge into their mind-working. Therefore, this kind of intuition can be applied to the same group of people who share collective views, but cannot be exercised worldwide.