Week 9 Discussion — How Far Can the Evidence Travel?

Hook

Star ratings, customer surveys, and "it's the same as" comparisons ask you to trust a few cases about many, or one thing about another. Some of them earn that trust and some do not, and in a real case the line is hard to draw, which is why the course keys only clear passages and leaves cases like these to discussion.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The running question asks whether the campus library should stay open around the clock during finals week (illustrative). A letter to the campus newsletter argues: "Gyms that stay open around the clock serve night-shift workers who would otherwise have nowhere to train, so the library should stay open all night during finals for students who study late." Run the three-step analogy test: list the similarities that bear on the conclusion, name the strongest disanalogy you can find, and argue whether the comparison is fairly strong, weak, or somewhere in between. You are judging the comparison, not whether the library should stay open.

Option B: Choose one rating, review page, or customer survey from your own life that claimed to speak for a whole group: an app's star rating, a restaurant's reviews, a store's "most customers agree" sign, or a club's feedback form (no politicians, parties, campaigns, election polls, or news outlets, and no one's real name). Say who was in the sample and how they got there, name the trap you see (too small, biased, or nonresponse) or argue that it avoided all three, and judge how far its result can travel: would you call the generalization strong or weak, and why?

There is no single right answer about how strong a comparison or a rating is in a case like these. What the course settles is the test: how a sample was chosen matters more than how big it is, and an analogy is only as strong as the similarities that bear on its conclusion. The real work is applying that test to a case you care about and defending your judgment with reasons.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 9 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. If a chatbot says a bigger sample is always better, or treats any difference between two things as a disanalogy, check that against this week's definitions. Do not ask a chatbot to invent a rating, a survey figure, or a study for you, and keep real people's names and live political questions out of your examples.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory critical thinking
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you
ask questions that make me reason it through. Never invent a statistic, a
rating, a survey figure, a study, or a quotation. Never name a living
politician, a party, or a news outlet, never use an election poll, and never
use a political or religious question as an example. Take no side on whether
the campus library should stay open overnight. Do not teach correlation and
causation or percentage points; this week is about populations and samples,
the three ways a sample can mislead, random samples, why how a sample is
chosen matters more than its size, the hasty generalization, and arguments
from analogy.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: The running question asks whether the campus library should stay
open around the clock during finals week (illustrative). A letter to the
campus newsletter argues: "Gyms that stay open around the clock serve
night-shift workers who would otherwise have nowhere to train, so the library
should stay open all night during finals for students who study late." I run
the three-step analogy test: I list the similarities that bear on the
conclusion, name the strongest disanalogy I can find, and argue whether the
comparison is fairly strong, weak, or somewhere in between. I am judging the
comparison, not whether the library should stay open.
Option B: I choose one rating, review page, or customer survey from my own
life that claimed to speak for a whole group: an app's star rating, a
restaurant's reviews, a store's "most customers agree" sign, or a club's
feedback form (no politicians, parties, campaigns, election polls, or news
outlets, and no one's real name). I say who was in the sample and how they
got there, name the trap I see (too small, biased, or nonresponse) or argue
that it avoided all three, and judge how far its result can travel: whether I
would call the generalization strong or weak, and why.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I name the population and the sample before I judge a rating
- whether I ask how the sample was chosen before I ask how big it is
- whether I tell a random sample apart from whoever happened to reply or be
  nearby
- whether I list similarities that bear on the conclusion, and look for a
  difference that bears on it too, instead of counting features
- whether I judge the argument as strong or weak rather than valid, and keep
  my verdict on the argument apart from my view of its conclusion

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint to my view, such as a disanalogy I missed between
gyms and the library, a reason the gym comparison might be stronger than I
think, a way the people who left a rating might differ from those who did
not, or a case where a large number of ratings really does reflect the whole
group. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made, such as naming
how a sample was chosen or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a
one-word answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Every message you
send before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 9 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — naming a population and a sample, checking how a sample was chosen before how big it is, testing an analogy by the similarities that bear on its conclusion, judging an inductive argument as strong or weak, stating the other side fairly, and using this week's terms accurately — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your judgment (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, list the similarities between the gyms and the library that bear on the conclusion, name the strongest disanalogy, and say whether the comparison is fairly strong or weak. For Option B, describe the rating or survey in your own words, name the population and the sample, say how the sample was chosen, and say how far the result can travel.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best case against your judgment — for example, that the gym comparison holds up better than you think, or that your rating's many reviewers probably do reflect most customers. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying a comparison is partly strong and partly weak is worth more than defending everything.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). What fact would you want before you trusted your judgment?

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 9 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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