Thread: Thinking tools

Originally Posted by Ian Anderson

Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos
"This admirable little book is only 135 pages long. You can read it in 2 hours. Chances are that they could be among the most enlightening and even profitable 120 minutes you ever spent. - Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times." (John Allen Paulos - Reviews of Innumeracy, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, and His Other Books)

Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos looks to be, from reading some comments, a great book to read. Something everyone should have on their bookshelf.

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Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online. Home : Oxford English Dictionary Part II

Please see the first message in this thread for Part I. I tried to edit that message with the following information, but could not.

December 2, 2010: The OED has redesigned its site for ease of use and expanded functionality. Perhaps the most dramatic change is the integration of the dictionary with the Historical Thesaurus to the OED, published in book form in 2009.

Here’s an example of how that works. Suppose you look up the word “theory” in the dictionary. Six broad definitions are listed in historical order, including the familiar modern sense of confirmed explanation of a phenomenon. If you click on the “thesaurus” link next to that definition you get a pop-up of nearly two dozen categories of words with similar meanings, each accompanied by a date of first usage. Clicking on one such entry, “construct,” takes you to a definition for that word.

Alternatively, you can look up “theory” using the online Thesaurus. You are presented with a list of nine outline positions in breadcrumb format, which presents the word’s nuanced senses in an easily understood visual form. Click on your preferred usage, such as “theorem,” and you are taken to that word’s dictionary listing.

The OED has also programmed its new site to present the results of some interesting data mining . For example, you can get a listing of the sources for the project’s three million quotations in order of frequency. The most popular source is the Times of London with over 36,000 citations, followed by William Shakespeare with over 33,000. I was surprised to see a third place Walter Scott, with nearly 17,000 quotations.

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Hi gang!

I'm not sure if you all know about this one or not, but Intel has some thinking tools. They're free, and I've used them with my high school classes. The "Seeing Reason" tool is like a generic, though less powerful, version of inspiration.

-Matt

Intel Thinking Tools. Intel Education - K12 Thinking Tools

Thanks Matt, cravenco, Kizmet, MISin08, for contributing to this thread. I had a chance to review the Intel thinking tools, which are geared toward K-12 education and look as if they could be stimulating to young minds.

The Visual Ranking Tool encourages thinking about criteria for ranking lists.

The site says the Seeing Reason Tool "creates maps of cause and effect," to make "causal maps" or what has elsewhere been called "Concept Maps."

The Showing Evidence Tool provides a graphic way to attach blocks of textual evidence to a claim.

It looks as if all of these tools are cloud based, making them accessible to anyone connected to the Internet.

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Google Labs Ngram Viewer. Google Ngram Viewer

This new Google tool lets you track the popularity of words and phrases appearing in published books.

Here's an Ngram showing the relative popularity of the words "religion" and "science :"

http://www.adiatha.com/photos/religion_science.png

And just how popular are God and the devil, anyhow? Is one gaining on the other? Here's the answer:

http://www.adiatha.com/photos/God_devil.png

By the way, change the query to god with a lower case and note the difference. I am thinking that one possible reason is the use of the lower case god to refer to high achieving artists, scientists, and so on in recent times.

Finally, here's an amusing graph that shows how Henry James's popularity spiked in the 1950s, then fell. And note the gradual rise of less popular Edith Wharton:

http://www.adiatha.com/photos/james%20and%20wharton.png

	Concordia University - Portland Concordia University - Portland Located in Portland, Oregon, Concordia University is a private, Christian, liberal arts university. The school offers a variety of online degrees, including an MBA, Masters in Education with specialties in ESOL, Curriculum Instruction, Methods of Leadership, Science, Reading, and Special Education. The school is regonally accredited, the most widely recognized form of accreditation. Click Here to receive FREE information on this school. [/center]

Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft.
by Professor Brooks Landon.
Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft

You cannot separate a sentence’s form from its content, asserts Dr. Landon in this series of video lectures. If it follows that more complex form may express more involved content, and if it is true that we think in terms of sentences, then one might conclude that mastering the art of making productive combinations of underlying propositions may assist us in bringing to our thinking a greater measure of comprehension and clarity.

Complex sentences often begin with base clauses to which free modifiers are added, bringing to the veneer of the sentence the chiaroscuro of nuance, engaging the reader in a challenging dialectic of interpretation, and earning for themselves the sobriquet of cumulative.

Landon also covers the balanced sentence, usually structured with a semi-colon. Duality in a sentence communicates authority; phrases in series of three suggest reason and logic. Sentences deemed periodic, for which term Landon prefers the alternative suspensive, render the fullness of their meaning, or bring to completion their base clauses, at a point advanced along the path to the period.

Samuel Johnson, author of Lives of the Poets, was famous for his balanced sentences; Francis Bacon, author of On Studies, for his three-part constructions; Cicero, author of speeches and philosophical works, for his periodic ones.

The complex sentence is an art and a tool of thought. The Thinking Company has been advertising this series rather aggressively, so it seems to be popular. I listened to a number of the lectures multiple times.

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The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas.
A Syntopicon: An Index to The Great Ideas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We can deepen our understanding of a subject through the thoughts of those who have gone before: What did writers of the past say about the hidden and driving principles enlivening a given word, and how has its meaning changed over the centuries in subtle ways?

The Oxford English Dictionary contains some answers to those questions (see the previous entries in this thread). Deeper insight is available from The Syntopicon, the index to the Great Books of the Western World.

Suppose one is undertaking research on democracy, for example. The entry on “Democracy” in the Syntopicon lists over a half dozen sub-topics from “The comparison of democracy with other forms of government” to “Demagoguery and the danger of revolution” and “The challenge of war and peace: the citizen army.” Entries under these topics guide student to hundreds of textual passages from Euripedes and Plato through Tolstoy, Orwell and Marx.

While digesting these extensive citations requires time and mental effort, the reader will possess a much firmer grasp of the concept of democracy than someone satisfied with a more easily digested review of current literature.

The Syntopicon, available at many libraries, treats nearly 3,000 topics under 102 main ideas, the latter including Art, Dialectic, Education , Family, Happiness, Language, Love, Mind and Religion.

	George Washington University George Washington University GWU offers an online Bachelor’s Degree in Police Science; and Master’s Degrees in Education and Human Development, Paralegal Studies, Public Relations, Educational Technology Lead, MBA – Healthcare, and MPS in Security and Safety Leadership. GW University is a prestigious and well regarded school. Established in the heart of the nation's capital in 1821, GW provides innovative programs in more than 200 fields of study, including graduate certificate, master's and doctoral programs. Under the guidance of a world-renowned faculty, you will explore both theory and practice in courses that prepare you to meet the needs of an increasingly complex society. Click Here to receive FREE information on this school.

If you work in finance or just want to sound like you know what you're talking about before meeting with your fiancial advisor:

Barron's Financial Guides Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms

CueCard - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com Here is a nice, free, flashcard program As most students know, there are an infinite amount of uses for them. I've never been a fan of flash cards myself (they tend to take longer just to make than I actually need in total to memorize a list), but these are so quick and convenient, that I find myself using them for certain items that require rote.

Memorize numbers with this online mnemonic generator - Rememberg.com This is the most complete website that I have come across for introducing some of the most tried and tested memory techniques. Use it to learn the phonetic major system for remembering long numbers, combine it with it's phonetic-mneumonic search feature to make a list of "pegs" that turn your mind into a powerhouse of numeric recollection!

Discovery Health "The Method of Loci" The Method of Loci is a memory technique that has been used for millenia, and guess what, it works for absolutely anyone who has an imagination. This technique can be used without any prior training nor practice at all with great results. Take two minutes to learn something that you can carry with you the rest of your life! I've only used this technique myself on a few occasions, but I can still recall nearly every single detail of the lectures (dozens of hours of them, in fact) that I practiced on, even over a year later!

Yeah, i am agree with you.....

Thank you Philip

I have and still use mind maps. It helps bring things into focus. Thanks Phillip.

I find mindmaps restricting - my brain works better if I can manipulate, move and link the 'boxes' in any way - to see/create links after the fact. Also, to attach notes to the 'box' (thought) is helpful. Twig, the little brother to Tinderbox has been helpful for information management. Tinderbox: The Tool For Notes

DEVONthink (Pro Office) for AI connections to all saved info (PDF's, book notes, articles...whatever you throw into your personal database). Downloads, and scans (automatic OCR). Excellent tool

I have a medical dictionary and a first aid application in phone and it is really helpful in emergency situations.