Evaluating Information

Are you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles? Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives. - Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untrustworthy information. - Understand how to tell when statistics can be trusted and when they are being used to deceive. - Inoculate yourself against the logical fallacies that can mislead even the brightest among us.

This engaging guide will equip students with the knowledge, skills and tools to find and evaluate academic information in a critical, informed and thoughtful way. It begins by encouraging students to think about the purpose of their information search, before taking them step-by-step through the process of searching for information, from sifting through search results to critically evaluating information. The final part of the book explores finding and evaluating information in the wider world, and shows students how to put the skills they've learned into effect in the workplace and in daily life. This will be an essential resource for students of all disciplines who need to master the fundamentals of finding information.

Making decisions is a critical part of every job. However we know so little about the often subliminal processes that shape the decisions we make. The Secret Life of Decisions exposes the unchallenged myths and distortions that impact our reasoning ability, raising our awareness of the many traps into which we can fall . Rather than being the rational output of our reasoning abilities, the authors show decision making to be a highly imprecise process. As decision makers we come to the table armed with our own perspectives, preferences, filters, heuristics and biases, influenced by a broad range of social influences many operating subliminally.

Critical thinking is an essential 21st century skill. Think Critically gives you simple, direct guidance on how to effectively assess and critique the world around you.  Understand the nature of assumptions and claims Grasp the notion of valid and invalid arguments and evidence Gain practical skills and confidence in reading, writing and doing research.

Knowing how to check and challenge information is essential for academic study - and our everyday lives. This practical guide shows you how to be savvy about using sources and improve your information literacy. Learn techniques for efficient and effective fact-checking. Find out how to evaluate whether a source is credible Identify and challenge misinformation in academia and beyond.