Final Exam — Instructions
Overview
This is the scored final exam for Critical Thinking. It is cumulative: its questions reach all nine course objectives, from finding an argument in Week 1 to reasoning about values and building your own case in Week 15. It is given in Week 16, the finals week, which has no new material.
The final has 40 questions, and every question counts the same. Thirty-eight of them ask you to select exactly one option, and two ask you to judge a true-or-false statement. Sixteen questions are on the easier side, 20 are of medium difficulty, and 4 are harder. Every passage, table, chart, or chatbot exchange a question uses is written out in the question in words, so nothing depends on seeing a picture. A few questions ask for a small piece of arithmetic, such as a percent from a table or a total from a cost's inputs, and scratch paper is enough for it.
Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Argument Workshops. Most questions describe a short illustrative passage or scenario and ask you to name the test that fits it, run that test, or say what its verdict means.
Coverage and scope
The questions were drawn from the course's question bank, and every one of the nine objectives appears at least once. The draw does not spread evenly across the weeks. Here is what this form actually contains, first by the week each question's material comes from and then by objective.
| Week | Topic | Questions | Objectives checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Inductive generalization and analogy | 4 | Objective 5 (3), Objective 3 (1) |
| 10 | Causal reasoning | 7 | Objective 5 (5), Objective 4 (2) |
| 11 | Numbers in the news | 4 | Objective 6 (3), Objective 1 (1) |
| 12 | Evaluating sources and evidence | 7 | Objective 7 (5), Objective 4 (2) |
| 13 | Science and explanation | 5 | Objective 8 (3), Objective 3 (2) |
| 14 | Bias and decision-making | 6 | Objective 8 (5), Objective 2 (1) |
| 15 | Reasoning about values and the course synthesis | 7 | Objective 9 (5), Objective 2 (2) |
| Objective | What the questions ask you to do | Weeks that teach it | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Find claims and arguments, and tell an argument from an explanation or a report | 1, carried into 11 | 1 |
| 2 | Write an argument out in standard form, supply a premise under charity, and map objections and replies | 2, carried into 14 and 15 | 3 |
| 3 | Judge deductive reasoning: validity, soundness, strength, cogency, and the conditional forms | 3 to 5, carried into 9 and 13 | 3 |
| 4 | Explain how language shapes reasoning, and name the informal fallacies | 6 to 8, carried into 10 and 12 | 4 |
| 5 | Judge samples, analogies, and causal claims | 9 and 10 | 8 |
| 6 | Reason with percentages, risks, base rates, and graphs | 11 | 3 |
| 7 | Weigh sources, trace claims, and catch out-of-context and AI-made misinformation | 12 | 5 |
| 8 | Test scientific explanations, and catch bias in your own thinking | 13 and 14 | 8 |
| 9 | Separate value from fact, use the ethical frameworks evenhandedly, and build and defend an argument | 15 | 5 |
Each question checks exactly one objective, so the objective column adds to 40, the same as the week column.
Read the two tables together. All 40 questions come from the material of Weeks 9 to 15. No question is drawn directly from the material of Weeks 1 to 8. Weeks 10, 12, and 15 carry the most questions, 7 each. Week 14 has 6, Week 13 has 5, and Weeks 9 and 11 have 4 each. By objective, the inductive tests (Objective 5) and science and bias (Objective 8) are the heaviest, with 8 questions each. Sources (Objective 7) and values and argument-building (Objective 9) follow with 5 each.
Here are the skills the drawn form asks for, week by week:
- Week 9: name the population and the sample in a claim about a group, say what makes a sample random in the course's sense, spot a hasty generalization, and remember that even a strong generalization from a good sample can miss.
- Week 10: tell a correlation from a causal claim, name the rival explanations (a confounding factor, reverse causation, and coincidence), work a percent from a small two-way table and read the table once a third factor is held fixed, and name one of Mill's methods. Keep the post hoc fallacy apart from a slippery slope, and keep a supported slope apart from an unsupported one.
- Week 11: keep percentage points apart from percent change, set a base-rate problem out in natural frequencies and say what a positive result means, and notice when a figure is working as a premise.
- Week 12: weigh a source on expertise, track record, independence, and evidence shown, tell a primary source from a secondary one while tracing a claim, rebuild a stated figure from its inputs, verify a cloned-voice call the way the course teaches, and tell a fair appeal to an expert from an appeal to someone speaking outside their field.
- Week 13: test a claim for falsifiability, choose the best of several rival explanations by fit, simplicity, scope, and consistency, name the appeal to ignorance, and see why a failed prediction refutes a hypothesis by a valid form while a passed prediction only supports it.
- Week 14: choose a disconfirming test over a confirming one, recall what Wason's 2-4-6 task showed, name the shortcut of judging by easy recall (availability) and anchoring, work a discount from an anchor price, set a confident plan beside its track record, and place an objection on an argument map.
- Week 15: pick out the value premise in a moral argument, tell a factual disagreement from a value disagreement, name the framework a reason comes from, write the opposing view as a steelman, and draw a reply on an argument map.
The early objectives still count. Eleven questions check Objectives 1 to 4, and every one of them sits inside a later week's material. The counterexample method and the conditional forms from Weeks 3 and 4 come back when a hypothesis is tested. Validity and cogency come back inside a sampling question. The fallacy skills of Objective 4, first taught in Weeks 6 to 8, come back as post hoc and the slippery slope in Week 10 and as the misused appeal to an expert in Week 12. The standard form and the argument map from Week 2 come back with the objection, the reply, and the value premise.
These notes map the skills the final checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.
Instructions
- Attempts: one. The final is a single scored attempt.
- Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
- Window: the final opens in Week 16 and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
- Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
- Order: the options inside each question are shuffled for each student, so refer to an option by what it says, never by its place in the list.
- Materials: every passage, table, and chart a question uses is written out in the question, so scratch paper is all you need for the few small calculations. Unless your instructor announces otherwise, the final is closed-note.
- After you submit: Canvas shows your result. The keyed choices stay hidden so the final stays fair for every student.
Academic integrity
The final is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. These rules come from the course syllabus. The final confirms that you personally can identify an argument, test its form, name a fallacy, and work a base-rate or risk problem.
The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice final, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the final word for word.
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