INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE REASONING; DETECTIVE AND SUSPENSE FILMS

This is how I explained deductive and inductive reasoning to my students..

Deductive reasoning:

Say you are at home watching television. The first show to come on is “McCloud’ or “Starsky and Hutch” or “CSI” Anyway it is a detective show. A crime has been committed. The lead actor or rather lead detective looks at the clues.

He is using deductive reasoning. He starts with a conclusion, the victim. He clearly has been murdered. The detective looks for motives, opportunity, and means. He works from a conclusion backwards looking for evidence to support the conclusion. Detectives use deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning

Back to the television. The next program after the detective show is a suspense drama movie. Doris Day or Deana Durbin or some heroine is in danger. She has received poisoned chocolates which the poor dog ate and died. Someone tried to run her over with a car. Someone barely missed her with a rifle shot. She comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to kill her. Her reasoning is much different than that of the detective. She takes close call number one, close call number two and close call number three and decides that she is in danger. She is moving toward a conclusion.

The detective on the first program started with a conclusion and worked backwards. In the suspense drama, the heroine worked toward a conclusion.

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Speed Learning

By Mary Ann Slavcheff

Now that we know pegging and chaining, are there others ways to speed up learning? There are. 

Mnemonics

Thirty Days Has September, April, June and November.

Fall back; spring ahead.

Red sunset at dawning, sailors warning; red sunset at night, sailors delight.

Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.

I before E except after C.

There are a few others that night be less well known.

What happened to Henry VIII’s wives?

Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorces, Beheaded, Survived.

What is the order of the planets from the sun? 

My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.

Songs

People in my generation know what year the battle of New Orleans was fought.  We 

simply remember the first line of a Johnny Horton hit song. “In 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.”

Many years later Tom Lehrer sang about the “Elements.” Hundreds of kids memorized the lyrics and the elements. Gosh that was fun. And while singing along with Lehner or with their friends, they didn’t even have to use chaining or pegging.

I have an album that includes campaign songs from each president and another album that includes songs from some of the presidential losers.

There are songs about adverbs, adjectives, nouns and even pronouns.

YouTube

You can find most if not all of the songs listed above free on youTube.  I learned American Sign Language on YouTube. I am sure one can take guitar lessons and much more from this site.

I Tunes U.

Say you are taking a class in mathematics, chemistry or political science, and you are having difficulty with the instructor or the textbook. Maybe you have not started the class yet, but you want a preview.  Maybe you already took the class and want to know more. Check out iTunes U.  The lectures are free.  It is a college education without the expense.

Television

I remember hearing students discuss the television series, “The Tudors.” in the elevator at Wayne County Community College. They were surprised that the future Queen Elizabeth I was the daughter of Ann Boleyn, who had seemed to be more of a pretty mistress in the series than a real queen.  While they may have been enjoying the soap opera aspects of the story, they were also learning history.

Growing up in the 1950’s, television westerns started my interest in American history.  Recently there have been movies made about both John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. When films turn to history, the story ideas are unlimited.

But there are also police procedurals and crime scene investigation (to learn science on a dozen levels). One television program was about a mathematician.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor  in her autobiography writes about watching “Perry Mason” on television when she was growing up. It made her wonder not only about the jobs that lawyers do, but also about what the judge was doing.  The rest as they say is history.  She sits on the Supreme Court now.

Loci, A Memorization Technique


We know the layout of our homes or apartments.  We might also know the layout of homes, businesses and streets where we work, where we used to live or where friends live or work. Why not use these places to peg new information?

Pegging using location is called Loci, an ancient memory technique. Roman senators used Loci to memorize long well-organized speeches that might go on for hours. They mentally planned their speeches and pegged different parts of it to places within their homes or streets or communities.

For instance, if I want to use Loci instead of a fun alphabet, I know the order of items in my laundry room.  1. doorway  2. litter pan  3. window   4. dryer  5. wall cabinets  6. mops   7.  furnace  8. washing machine 9. hot water heater  10.  sink.

Note that I assigned each item a number.  From now on each of our pegging lists should have numbers.  The only time we won’t use numbers with our lists is when using a fun alphabet and even there numbers can be helpful.

Numbers help us keep order, and they keep us from missing any items on our list. The same items should be used over and over in a Loci list.  There are other items in my laundry room, but adding or subtract items can be confusing.

I have a pegging list of items on Woodward Avenue near my home. Since I first created and memorized that list some things have changed. The Fantastic Sam’s beauty salon is gone, but it is still an its on my loci pegging list.  The sculptor, Marshal Frederick’s study was already gone and replaced by an office building. Still I used Marshall Frederick’s studio.  A historical marker sits there, and I like to pick the most interesting places.  Just like the fun alphabet, create your own Loci list.

It is probably best to start with a room in your own home.

If you move or change furniture a lot, try to stick with one arrangement for your pegging list. A laundry room night work better than a living room because things don’t change much.

Now back to my laundry room pegging list. 

Say I wanted to memorize a list of the planets in order from the sun. I use my imagination, and my laundry room  and I peg. 

The first planet is Mercury, so I imagine a Mercury automobile sitting in the doorway.  (That is a ridiculous image, but because it is silly, I will be more likely to remember it.) What is a Mercury car doing inside my house, blocking entrance to my laundry room.  What color is the car? What year? 

I imagine this in as much detail as I can.

I might also imagine Mercury, the Greek messenger of the gods, that we see so often in the florist’s commercials.  What you imagine to help you remember is up to you.  I picked a silver 2014 Mercury Grand Marquis.  Beautiful.

Next in my laundry room I have a litter pan. The second planet is Venus. I might picture Venus from the famous Botticelli painting “The Birth of Venus.”  There she is standing in my cat’s litter pan.

Next I look out my window and see Earth, the third planet from the sun. I see the actress Eartha Kitt sitting there. What is she wearing?  A  green robe. She holds a globe. She waves and smiles. I might also see giant  earth worms, hear them singing the song, “Earth Angel” while an earthquake shakes my back yard. There are always different images I can create.

Number four  is Mars. Mars candy bars are in my dryer.  The chocolate is going to melt. I will have a mess to clean up unless I eat all those candy bars.  I start taking the wrappers off. I taste the creamy chocolate of a Mars bar.  Maybe the television detective Veronica Mars is helping me.  We eat those Mars bars together. I see us clearly standing by my dryer.

Next comes the wall cabinets and Jupiter.  I might have a map of Jupiter, Florida or a picture of the Roman God Jupiter on the cabinet doors. I might have copies of “Joup” magazine inside.  I might have bottles of juice and piles of tar paper. Any of these items will help me remember the fifth planet from the sun is Jupiter.

Below  my wall cabinet I have a pail full of mops. The sixth planet to remember is Saturn.  Is that another automobile sitting there beside the dryer with mops hanging out of all the windows?  The car is even being driven by a mop. It’s a good thing GM named so many cars after planets.  It helps with my pegging.  My imaginary Saturn is red.

Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, is next?  I have a funny little roadrunner  running around in circles  on my furnace screaming, “You ran us.” 

Neptune is  the eighth planet reminds me of Nipper, the RCA Victor dog who hears his master’s voice. Neptune would make a great name for a dog.  He is swimming in my washing machine.  In there with him might be some Neptune High School cheer leader outfits. I like that image, but remember Veronica Mars went to Neptune High School.  I picture Veronica Mars standing by my washer wearing a neptune High School cheer leader costume.

Pluto is easier.  The dog Pluto from all those Walt Disney movies is on top of my hot water heater.  Another dog? Why not? We had two cars. The dog characters, Nipper and Pluto,  are very different.

Try Loci on some lists of your own. Draw the room. List  and memorize the items and then use the room to memorize something else like the capitals of U.S. states.  You will need several different rooms for that

But as learning is important and we learn better if we use more than one powerful memory technique, let me share another way to learn the planets in order from the sun.

Memorize this sentence.  

My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas.

Note the first letter of each word. M as in Mercury;  V as in Venus; E as in Earth; etc.

There are lots of ways to make learning easier. We are just getting started.

Puzzles

By MaryAnn Slavcheff

What is thinking outside the box? It is looking for new solutions. What if I ask you what is the missing state in this list?

New York

Maryland

Georgia

Maine

Texas

Louisiana

North Dakota

Idaho

Massachusetts

_????????_______

West Virginia

It is clearly not alphabetical order.

It isn’t the states in the order they entered the union. That would start with Delaware and New Jersey. The states are certainly not in order geographically.

By population? That doesn’t make sense either.

As we try different solutions, we are exposed to new knowledge. Be it the historical like the order states entered the union or geographic. We are learning as we solve a puzzle, but we are learning other things as we look for the answer.

With this puzzle we are doing something that students seldom do. We are thinking. It might take us a while to come around to thinking about state capitals. Most of us learned the in alphabetical order according to the state.

Montgomery, Alabama.

Juneau, Alaska

Phoenix, Arizona. And so on.

But what if we put the state capitals in alphabetical order according to their names.

Then we get:

Albany, New York

Annapolis, Maryland

Atlanta Georgia

Augusta, Maine

Austin, Texas

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Bismark, North Dakota

Boise, Idaho

Boston, Massachusetts

The answer to the puzzle is Nevada because the next capital in order is Carson City, Nevada. Puzzles are fun and certainly less threatening than tests. They inspire real thinking and real learning. Teachers often find puzzles take long chunks of their time and puzzles also have to changed often as the answers become common knowledge. People share puzzles, but rarely share tests. Therefore, teachers prepare tests instead of puzzles.

Serious students can make up their own tests and puzzles to help them learn. They can also try to stump each other. Tests we give ourselves are less threatening than tests given by a teacher. They give us an idea of how much we have learned.