About this Course

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Most professions these days require more than general intelligence. They require in addition the ability to collect, analyze and think about data. Personal life is enriched when these same skills are applied to problems in everyday life involving judgment and choice. This course presents basic concepts from statistics, probability, scientific methodology, cognitive psychology and cost-benefit theory and shows how they can be applied to everything from picking one product over another to critiquing media accounts of scientific research. Concepts are defined briefly and breezily and then applied to many examples drawn from business, the media and everyday life.
What kinds of things will you learn? Why it’s usually a mistake to interview people for a job. Why it’s highly unlikely that, if your first meal in a new restaurant is excellent, you will find the next meal to be as good. Why economists regularly walk out of movies and leave restaurant food uneaten. Why getting your picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated usually means your next season is going to be a disappointment. Why you might not have a disease even though you’ve tested positive for it. Why you’re never going to know how coffee affects you unless you conduct an experiment in which you flip a coin to determine whether you will have coffee on a given day. Why it might be a mistake to use an office in a building you own as opposed to having your office in someone else’s building. Why you should never keep a stock that’s going down in hopes that it will go back up and prevent you from losing any of your initial investment. Why it is that a great deal of health information presented in the media is misinformation.

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Beginner Level

Approx. 13 hours to complete

English

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Skills you will gain

Sunk Costs
Cost–Benefit Analysis
Cognitive Bias
Decision-Making
Data Analysis
Statistical Inference

Flexible deadlines

Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.

Shareable Certificate

Earn a Certificate upon completion

100% online

Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.

Beginner Level

Approx. 13 hours to complete

English

Could your company benefit from training employees on in-demand skills?

Try Coursera for Business

Instructor

Instructor rating

4.82/5 (275 Ratings)

Richard E. Nisbett

Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor

Department of Psychology

64,711 Learners

1 Course

Syllabus - What you will learn from this course

Content Rating97%(5,922 ratings)

Week

1

Week 1

1 hour to complete

Introduction

1 hour to complete

1 video (Total 15 min), 3 readings

1 hour to complete

Lesson 1: Statistics

1 hour to complete

2 videos (Total 29 min), 2 readings, 1 quiz

2 hours to complete

Lesson 2: The Law of Large Numbers

How to think about events in such a way that they can be counted and a decision can be made about how much data is enough. You will learn about the concept of error variance and how it can be combatted by obtaining multiple observations. Your will learn that your judgments about people’s personalities are prone to serious errors that are largely avoided for judgments about abilities. And you will discover why it’s usually a mistake to interview job applicants.

2 hours to complete

2 videos (Total 27 min), 2 readings, 4 quizzes

Week

2

Week 2

2 hours to complete

Lesson 3: Correlation

It can be extremely difficult to make an accurate assessment of how two variables are related to one another; prior beliefs can be more important than data in estimating the strength of a given relationship. You will learn simple tools to estimate degree of association. You will learn about the nature of illusory correlations and how to avoid them. You will learn about the concepts of confounded variable and self-selection error.

2 hours to complete

4 videos (Total 25 min), 3 readings, 2 quizzes

2 hours to complete

Lesson 4: Experiments

You will learn that correlations can only rarely provide conclusive evidence about whether one variable exerts a causal influence on another and why experiments provide far better evidence about causality than correlations. You will be shown how to conduct experiments in business settings and experiments on yourself. You will learn the distinction between within subject designs and between subject designs. You will learn about the concept of artifacts and some tricks for avoiding them. You will learn how to discover natural experiments.

2 hours to complete

3 videos (Total 42 min), 2 readings, 1 quiz

Week

3

Week 3

1 hour to complete

Lesson 5: Prediction

You will learn about the kinds of systematic errors we make when trying to predict the future. You will learn about regression to the mean and why you should assume that extreme values on a variable will be less extreme when next observed. You will learn how to think about observations in terms of true score plus error. You will learn about the concept of base rate and why it must be taken into account when estimating probabilities of specific events.

1 hour to complete

2 videos (Total 40 min), 2 readings, 1 quiz

1 hour to complete

Lesson 6: Cognitive Biases

We understand the world not through direct perception but through inferential procedures that we are unaware of. Our understanding of the world is heavily influenced by schemas or abstract representations of events. We are prone to serious judgment errors that can be avoided to a degree when we understand their basis. We make guesses about probability and causality by applying the representativeness heuristic based on similarity assessments which can be very misleading. We make judgments about frequency and probability by relying in part on the availability heuristic, judging things as frequent or probable to the degree that instances come readily to mind.

1 hour to complete

3 videos (Total 36 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes

Week

4

Week 4

1 hour to complete

Lesson 7: Choosing and Deciding

1 hour to complete

3 videos (Total 38 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes

2 hours to complete

Lesson 8: Logic and Dialectical Reasoning

The distinction between inductive logic and deductive logic. Syllogisms. Conditional reasoning. The distinction between truth of an argument and validity of an argument. The concepts of necessity and sufficiency. Venn diagrams. Common logical errors. When to avoid contradiction and when to embrace it, how to avoid undue certainty about judgments and decisions, and why attention to context rather than form is crucial for analysis of most real-world problems.

2 hours to complete

2 videos (Total 36 min), 1 reading, 2 quizzes

26 minutes to complete

Conclusion

26 minutes to complete

1 video (Total 6 min), 3 readings

Reviews

4.8

297 reviews

5 stars
81.79%
4 stars
16.05%
3 stars
1.74%
2 stars
0.15%
1 star
0.23%

TOP REVIEWS FROM MINDWARE: CRITICAL THINKING FOR THE INFORMATION AGE

by SPJul 9, 2017

Excellent course. I learnt a lot from this course. It has changed my thinking and I hope to be able to use it in making decisions both at home as well as at work.

by JMJul 28, 2019

This course is great! I recommend it to anyone who wants to be able to reason better and have more capabilities in making decisions. Thank you Dr. Nisbett and Coursera for providing this course.

by WSApr 9, 2021

The professor was excellent and the whole course was very much easy to follow. I enjoyed the exercises and the information learned was precise.

by GLJan 26, 2018

This is a fantastic course.

Even with two masters degrees I learnt a lot and have recommended it to my colleagues.

It should be taught to all students.

View all reviews

Frequently Asked Questions

When will I have access to the lectures and assignments?
Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:
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The course may offer 'Full Course, No Certificate' instead. This option lets you see all course materials, submit required assessments, and get a final grade. This also means that you will not be able to purchase a Certificate experience.
What will I get if I purchase the Certificate?
When you purchase a Certificate you get access to all course materials, including graded assignments. Upon completing the course, your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.
Is financial aid available?
Yes. In select learning programs, you can apply for financial aid or a scholarship if you can’t afford the enrollment fee. If fin aid or scholarship is available for your learning program selection, you’ll find a link to apply on the description page.

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Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age