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The Little Blue Reasoning Book: 50 Powerful Principles For Clear And Effective Thinking

This guidebook addresses one of the most critical yet seldom taught skills. Reasoning skills help us make sense of the world, including how to better make decisions, tackle opportunities, evaluate claims, and solve problems. Interwoven within the book's five sections -- Perception & Mindset, Decision Making, Creative Thinking, Analyzing Arguments, and Mastering Logic -- reader's will discover 50 reasoning tips that summarize the common themes behind classic reasoning problems and situations. Appendixes contain summaries of fallacious reasoning, analogies, trade-offs, and a review of critical reading skills. A wealth of examples, charts, and insightful problems makes The Little Blue Reasoning Book an invaluable guide for any individual wanting to further sharpen his or her thinking skills.Enjoy the benefits of your own self-paced reasoning course:*Gain insights into the four classic mindsets and how each influences one's outlook.*Make better decisions by framing problems with quantitative tools.*Employ creative thinking to bypass "roadblocks" and unlock novel solutions.*Evaluate claims by challenging the strength of key assumptions.*Use logic to break down arguments in a clear, easy-to-understand manner.*Review the 10 classic trade-offs to speed recognition of core issues.*Read with added clarity, whether your goal involves pleasure or profit.

Paperback: 296 pages

Publisher: Maven Publishing (March 15, 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1897393601

ISBN-13: 978-1897393604

Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #586,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #22 in Books > Education & Teaching > Higher & Continuing Education > Test Preparation > Graduate School > Graduate Preparation #597 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Logic & Language #745 in Books > Education & Teaching > Studying & Workbooks > Study Skills

This is the kind of book I wish I had in high school. No one teaches the art of thinking but every once in a while we have to give our brains a tune-up. One of my favorite topics is how the four classic mindsets influence how we view the world. I love how the following problem says so much about the way we think and how every answer choice is both right and wrong:Which of the following five sports is least like the other four?A) BaseballB) CricketC) Soccer (Football)D) GolfE) Ice HockeyThis is indeed an interesting question highlighting the possibility of multiple solutions and subjective interpretations. Not only would such a question never be chosen for an IQ test, but it also hints at ambiguity so often present whenever individuals make choices.Most people find themselves choosing choice D insofar as golf is primarily an individual sport while the other sports are team sports. Golf is also the only sport here in which a lower score beats a higher score. Some pontificate whether the distinction rests on the degree to which golf is more mental than physical while the other four sports are more physical than mental. Certainly physical speed is of obvious importance in all sports except golf.Choice E is likely the next most popular answer. Ice hockey is essentially a winter sport, whereas the other sports are typically played in warmer weather. In ice hockey, players use skates, whereas in the other sports players use sporting shoes. Ice hockey is also played with a puck, the others, with balls! (Pun intended -- ice hockey is notorious for being one of the roughest of sports and the only one listed above where you can legitimately "check" another player.

I bought this book based on the awards it had won and the number of very positive reviews on . Which leads me to say, I guess there's no accounting for taste. It's true that the book is fairly comprehensive in its scope, covering perception issues, creativity, analysis, and formal logic, along with a bundle of lists in appendix form.Unfortunately, it's all downhill from the table of contents. Nearly every chapter of Royal's book is studded with jarring non sequiturs and jumps in subject, beginning with the `preface', which is simply a logic humorous logic puzzle with no explanation at all. That turns out to be perfectly representative of what's to come. Royal loves lists. He loves lists a lot more than he loves any other form of writing, apparently, since most chapters consist of more lists than anything else; the last half of the book is nothing but lists. I ought to have been warned by the subtitle promising "50 powerful principles," but many of these appear to be simply classroom exercises pasted wholesale into this book (chapter two, embarrassingly, spends a page and a half with a list entitled `How is a good idea like an Iceberg?'[sic] and says "You may write your answers on a separate sheet of paper"!) Nor are the book's problems merely structural, but cross over into issues of fact; his first chapter erroneously describes the `infinite monkeys' thought experiment as the "billion chimpanzee" "saying" and then gives it as support for his statement that "the magic of chance or coincidence reminds us that almost anything is possible." This, unfortunately, is not true, as the mathematics only work as the number of monkeys approaches infinity. A technical point? Maybe.

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