Thinking Skills: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

308 Unit 7 Critical reasoning: Advanced Level

You may have left out some of these points

and you may have included others. But it is

hoped that your list will have been similar.

Clearly, many of the notes above are relevant

and could be used by one side or the other in

the debate.

Notice how this exercise has condensed

several passages, some of which were quite long,

into a handful of bullet points. You may need to

go back to the documents later to find specific

details, but mostly you can now work from the

notes in planning and writing your speech.

Inference

Once you have selected the relevant points

from the documents, the next task is to decide

what can be inferred from them, both

individually and collectively. You must also

decide what cannot be inferred, so that you do

not jump to conclusions. Take the table of host

cities in Doc 2. As raw data it just tells you each

of the venues of the Summer Olympics in

modern times. But the data supports a number

of quite striking facts. For instance, the

modern Games have never been held in Africa;

and Asia and South America are also clearly

under-represented in the table. You can count

up yourself how many times the Games have

been in Europe.

Facts like these are simply a matter of data

extraction, which is treated in more detail

and complexity in the problem-solving

sections of this book. If someone had wished

to make the point about the unequal

distribution of the host cities, they could

have presented the data in other ways, e.g.

percentages or pie charts. But here there are

no points being made overtly. The inferences

are left to the reader to draw, and that is what

you must do.

Drawing direct, factual conclusions from

the data is one thing. Making further

inferences and value judgements on the basis

of the data is another, and you must do it with

care. It would be a safe enough observation to

say that the international spirit of the

Olympic Games has not been reflected in the

choice of host cities. It would not be a safe

conclusion to say that there has been

favouritism and corruption in the IOC.

You would need evidence of a different kind

altogether to go that far. The most you could

infer in that direction is that the obvious

imbalance towards certain regions of the

world raises questions about favouritism,

and that this is not good for the reputation

of the Olympic movement, whether it is

founded or not.

Data table

shows most Games held in Europe or N. America

Doc 3 – internet discussion site

•   complex bidding system

•   IOC then decide

•   open to corruption e.g. Salt Lake City winter games

•   Olympic rings mean the five continents / designed in modern times

Doc 4 – official statement

Games belong entirely to IOC, a not-for-profit NGO