by david allan van nostrand | Mar 10, 2025 | critical thinking, Human Behavior, Shaky Science, Using Information
The American Psychological Association doesn’t like the term used by most people, lie detector, because the machine does not detect lies. The APA prefers the more scientific term, polygraph, a Greek word that meant “writing much.” There is no detecting going on...
by david allan van nostrand | May 13, 2024 | critical thinking, Research, Using Information
The word polar first meant the end of an axis. Visualize a world globe. Locate the North and South Poles and notice how they are geographic opposites on the axis around which the earth rotates once a day. After a time. the word polar was used to refer to things...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 15, 2024 | Human Behavior, Point of view, The world around us, Using Information
Typical Is Not Average Measures of central tendency are the basic mathematics of a thing Non-statisticians call those measures averages. The one most of us have in mind when we say average is the arithmetic mean. Arithmetic means (referred to as means) are the...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 9, 2023 | Advertising, Human Behavior, Language, Using Information
Who Is David Ogilvy? The New York Times said David Ogilvy was the Father of the Soft Sell The hard sell is the in-your-face way of selling products. It’s the strategy employed by timeshare salespeople, car dealers, Billy Mays, and the Bass-O-Matic. The hard sell’s...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 11, 2023 | critical thinking, Human Behavior, Using Information
What Is a Concept? Concepts are general ideas about things. They are mental representations we use to understand the world around us. Concepts represent groups of related ideas that are organized around a main theme. One example is how the concept of gravity includes...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 28, 2023 | Assumptions, critical thinking, Using Information
The bandwagon fallacy assumes that something must be true because others think it is. A great example is found in thousands of HR departments that value the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator because so many others use it. Just like a perpetual motion machine, its popularity...
