Conclusion

Steven Biko once said that "the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." I hope that you feel a little more difficult to lie to now. I happen to believe that people are good, and want to do and be good-- the only reason we acquiesce in what can only be called evil is because we are fooled or forced. If we have the right tools, and trust our minds, we will not be fooled. At that point we will have deprived oppression of its most powerful weapon, and it will be time to remake the world in accord with the best in each of us.

 

References

This course was substantially based on "The Snake and the Fox" by Mary Haight, "How to lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff, and "How to think Straight" by Thouless. If you want to go more deeply into logic, see those books and "The Logic of Real Arguments" and one of those first-year university texts in logic. But even the "Snake and the Fox" will go more deeply into things like Venn diagrams, truth tables, and so on.

If you'd like to do more statistics, I think the best place to go from here is "Statistics for Social Change" by Horowitz. It's a first course and it deals with all the concepts I've treated and more, and gives lots of practice problems and a more rigorous foundation.

 

 

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