Critical reasoning download

Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the facts stated in the above paragraph? What we can say about the following statement? Which of the following will strengthen the following statement? Which of the following inferences can be drawn from the statements in the above passage? Solutions S1. Yes, because of cotton glut post-September We can have good reason for believing that something will happen in the future based on evidence from the past, or for believing that what is known to be true of a number of cases will be true of another similar case.

For example, we could have good reason to believe that a new car will be reliable, based on the knowledge that most other cars of that model have been reliable. In addition to differences in the strength of arguments, there are also different ways in which reasons can support their conclusions; arguments may present past experience as evidence for their conclusion, they may use analogies i.

In relation to all these kinds of reasons, it is useful to ask yourself the questions in the following summary. In order to answer this question, you will need to consider the following points. Consider the following argument: You ought to take a Happitum travel sickness pill when you go on the ferry. In this example, it is easy to see that the reasons, if true, give fairly strong support to the conclusion.

If you have always been sick on sea crossings, then past experience suggests that you are likely to be sick this time, unless you can prevent this, perhaps by taking some effective drug. So it would be reasonable to act on the evidence that Happitum is effective in preventing sea-sickness.

Of course, there may be other considerations, not mentioned in the argument, which would count against the conclusion. If, for example, Happitum had serious side-effects, then it may be more sensible to endure sea-sickness rather than risk ill-health from the drug.

Or maybe there are techniques for combating sea-sickness for example, staying on deck and breathing deeply , which are likely to be effective, and which are less unpleasant than taking a drug. In the past, most of the deaths which have occurred shortly after heart transplant operations have been due to rejection.

So it is likely that these new drugs will improve the survival rate of heart transplant patients. Are the reasons relevant to the conclusion? Yes, since if most deaths of heart transplant patients have been caused by organ rejection then the use of drugs which counteract rejection is likely to enable some patients to survive who would have died without the drugs.

The reasons are not only relevant to the conclusion, they give it strong support since if some patients survive who would otherwise have died, this means that the survival rate is higher. There may, of course, be evidence not presented here which would count against the conclusion, for example, if the drugs were highly toxic.

But on the assumption that the drugs have been tested for toxicity, and found to be relatively safe, we can regard the conclusion as well supported by the reasons.

They soon forget about the test once they start to drive. All it indicates is that candidates can read and write. It has no bearing on their ability to drive. This argument uses evidence from Portugal in order to draw a conclusion about what would be likely to happen in the UK. Remember that we are not questioning the truth of the reasons at this stage. We are considering whether, assuming the reasons to be true, they support the conclusion.

Well it certainly is a piece of evidence which is worth taking into account, since it is one example of a test which has not had the result which is perhaps hoped for in the UK. Is there any evidence from other countries besides Portugal? Are there any cultural differences which might give a test greater impact on attitudes amongst young drivers in the UK than it has amongst their counterparts in Portugal?

This may be because a mistake in logic is made in moving from the reasons to the conclusion, or it may be because the reasons support the conclusion only if they are accompanied by an implausible assumption.

We illustrate this with the following examples. If we take the intermediate conclusion as meaning that some of what is shown on television affects behaviour, then it does follow from the reason given, because television advertising is some of what is shown on television. However, the intermediate conclusion, interpreted in this way does not support the main conclusion, as it is intended to, because violence might be one of the things shown on television which does not affect behaviour.

If, on the other hand, we interpret the intermediate conclusion as meaning that everything shown on television affects behaviour, then it does not follow from the reason, because from the fact that one thing shown on television affects behaviour, it does not follow that everything else shown on television will do the same.

So, whichever way we interpret the intermediate conclusion, this is not a good piece of reasoning, because it does not give good grounds for the conclusion it draws.

When assessing arguments, it is useful to look out for analogies or comparisons, and to consider whether the two things which are being compared really are alike in ways which are relevant to the conclusion which is being drawn. This was evident in evaluating reasoning 43 our discussion on pp. But over the last thirty years new illnesses, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, have appeared, and we have become more vulnerable to old diseases such as heart disease, strokes and cancer.

So the increased wealth of the country has not produced improvements in the health of the population. Before reading on, identify the conclusion and the reasons in this passage.

The evidence offered for this is that over a period during which the wealth of the country has increased, new diseases have appeared, and certain old diseases have become more common. Here is a more detailed analysis of the reasoning. There are two strands. First: Basic Reason 1: Over the last thirty years new illnesses, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, have appeared, and we have become more vulnerable to old diseases such as heart disease, strokes and cancer.

This is intended to support an unstated: Intermediate conclusion: There have been no improvements in the health of the population over the last thirty years. Do you accept that the intermediate conclusion follows from basic Reason 1, that basic Reason 2 follows from the unstated assumption, and that the main conclusion follows from the intermediate conclusion together with basic Reason 2?

Perhaps people have longer lives than was the case thirty years ago, and perhaps they are relatively healthy for long periods of their lives, before succumbing in old age to heart disease, strokes or cancer. This could be true if, as the argument tries to suggest, there have been no improvements in the health of the population.

The argument simply assumes, without producing any evidence for it, that because two things have occurred together, one of them must have caused the other. This may be because a third factor — perhaps eating large amounts of sugary foods — causes both these conditions. All that you have found when you have discovered a correlation is that two things occur together.

This may be because x causes y, or because y causes x, or because x and y are both caused by something else, or it may be simply a coincidence. Nevertheless it is important to note that discovering correlations is not a pointless exercise. Example 4: Exhaustion of mineral resources Here is our last example in this section.

It has always been the case in the past that new discoveries of mineral resources have kept pace with demand. For example, bauxite reserves have tripled in the last ten years, while demand has doubled over the same period. At no time have the known reserves of minerals been as great as the total mineral resources of the world. Before reading on, identify the conclusion and the reasons in this argument, and try to state for yourself what is going wrong in moving from the reasons to the conclusion.

The argument can be regarded as having the following structure: Reason 1: It has always been the case in the past that new discoveries of mineral reserves have kept pace with demand.

Reason 2: At no time have the known reserves of minerals been as great as the total mineral resources of the world. Note that the example presented in the second sentence is being used to give some support to Reason 1.

It is being used in an illustrative way. The second sentence could be included in the argument structure by simply treating it as a part of Reason 1. But this assumption underlies many arguments, particularly those relying on laws of science for example that at sea level, water boils at degrees Celsius , and in many such contexts, it is not an unreasonable assumption to make.

Why should we not conclude that there is no imminent danger of running out of mineral resources, based on evidence that at any given time in the past the known reserves of minerals have not been as great as the total mineral resources of the world? It makes no mention of evidence which may be relevant — i. In Example 4 the argument concluded that exhaustion of the mineral resources of the world was not imminent.

In this text we have started with a different approach, which requires engaging with the particular subject matter of each argument. The skill which needs to be developed is an ability to say what is going wrong in the move from the reasons to the conclusion in a particular argument. Second, relying simply on lists of fallacies can encourage us to overlook the context of the argument, and to classify arguments in a way which can cut off further reasoning instead of allowing us to engage with the topic in its own context.

An example can clarify our last point. For example, someone may argue that we should not legalise the sale and use of cannabis because to do so would set us upon a slippery slope to legalisation of more harmful drugs. It would require us to say why in this particular case, the supposed undesirable consequence need not occur. This is a much more challenging task, because the introduction of legislation can act as a precedent in some circumstances, and can change the climate of opinion in such a way as to make some further consequence more likely to happen.

However, being aware of some standard fallacies may help you to see in some cases what is going wrong in an argument, so we mention a few more here. Establishing, for example, that someone is a bully is not a good reason to conclude that their reasoning must be at fault. However, some personal characteristics for example, a tendency to exaggerate, or a temporary or permanent mental incapacity may be relevant to judgements about the reliability of information which others give us.

But it is fallacious to claim that a particular conclusion does not follow from acceptable evidence or true reasons, simply on the grounds that the person drawing the conclusion has an unpleasant personality. Here are two examples in which this occurs.

You will be rich if you win the lottery. But you never buy a lottery ticket, so you will never be rich. In January , an injunction was granted preventing publication of information as to the whereabouts of the killers of a child, James Bulger. Suppose someone objected to the judgment on the grounds that it is based on the view that the killers should be rewarded for becoming reformed characters during their period of detention. This would be setting up a straw man, that is, an argument which can easily be knocked down because it is obviously weak, but which is not what the proponent of the original argument believes or claims.

The fallacy of begging the question involves taking for granted that which one was claiming to conclude, as illustrated in the following argument: We know that Jesus was the son of God, because he said so, and the son of God would not lie. The conclusion that Jesus was the son of God does not follow from the two reasons offered — that he said so, and that the son of God would not lie — without the assumption that the person who said he was the son of God was indeed the son of God, that is without taking for granted the truth of what it aimed to prove.

Summary: Identifying flaws in arguments 1 Identify the main conclusion. Basketball would then become an exciting game for fans everywhere. Law School Admission Test, October Crimes and outrages of all sorts have been committed under a full moon by a wide variety of people.

The advice to derive from this is clear: when the moon is full, trust no-one, not even yourself. Law School Admission Test, September Young people today have more formal education than their grandparents had. Wilma is young, so she must have more formal education than her grandparents had. Law School Admission Test, Neither marijuana nor LSD can be harmful, since they are used by doctors to ease the pain of cancer patients. One example of a disease which is attributable to diet is the heart attack, which is so common in Western countries.

In countries with different diets, the diseases differ also. For example, in Japan the most common fatal diseases are strokes and cancers of the stomach. They would die instead from the diseases which are common in Japan — that is to say, strokes and cancers of the stomach. Who invented cooking? So cooking must have been invented at that time. But we know this witness has a grudge against Fred, and he has been known to give unreliable evidence in the past.

Most people could be musical geniuses if they practised hard enough. A psychologist interested in whether genius is mainly hard work rather than inspiration has examined the lives of seventy-six composers.

Most of them had at least a decade of painstaking training before they wrote any masterpieces. Some people claim that poverty is one of the causes of crime. A large study in Norway found that those people who scored highly in tests of anxiety levels were the people most likely to be suffering from pre-malignancies, i. Thus it is evident that if anxiety states could be more easily diagnosed and treated, the incidence of cancer would fall.

Was the universe created by an intelligent designer, as some religions claim? The way in which an intelligent being would design a universe would be to keep it simple.

But we inhabit a hugely, and possibly unnecessarily, complex universe. So we can conclude that the being who designed the universe was not intelligent. But the conclusion that should be drawn is that there is no link between diet and disease, because then we could stop worrying about our diet, and focus on lifestyle changes that really would improve our health, such as not smoking, cutting down on alcohol, and increasing the amount of exercise we take.

People often have the experience of thinking about someone, and then shortly afterwards receiving a phone call from that person. This is exactly what would happen if telepathy were operating. So, despite the claims of sceptics, telepathy clearly is possible. Answers to Exercise 9 are given on pp. One response to such challenges would be to question the truth of the new piece of evidence, and this would involve one of the skills we have already mentioned — that of evaluating the truth of evidence or reasons.

Another response might be to say that even if the new piece of evidence were true, it would not weaken the conclusion. This involves the other vital skill which we have discussed — that of assessing the degree of support which a reason gives to a conclusion. Of course, the context may not be one in which we are trying to defend a conclusion — nor should we be thinking in terms of the necessity to defend a conclusion at all costs. That would be to indulge in uncritical thinking — being determined to believe something even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

So we must be prepared to acknowledge that sometimes additional evidence will weaken our conclusions. Once we see that the new evidence is relevant to the issue, we must then consider whether it counts for or against our earlier opinion — that is to say we must consider whether it strengthens our reasoning and not merely whether it weakens it.

Exercise Evaluating further evidence This exercise gives you practice in evaluating the impact of additional evidence on an argument. For each of the following multiple choice questions, pick the correct response, explain why it is the correct response, and explain why each of the other responses is incorrect. Which of the following, if true, weakens the conclusion referred to in the above passage?

This results because the high salaries offered to engineers without advanced degrees reduce the incentive to pursue post-graduate studies. Therefore, businesses will have to recognise that their long-term interests would best be served by reducing salaries for those without advanced degrees. Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the above argument? Law School Admission Test, December 3 Joan: One method of reducing serious crime in the United States is to adopt the English system of providing free heroin to heroin addicts.

Although they are an important safety feature, too few are defective to make the expense of testing them worthwhile. Which of the following, if true, points out the most serious weakness in the recommendations of the automobile association?

Law School Admission Test, February 5 A recent study found that if children watched up to one hour of television a day, their performance in school was unaffected, but if they watched between two and three hours a day, they were likely to perform considerably less well than their peers who watched less.

If true, which of the following statements about the children in the study would most strengthen the conclusions of the researchers? Law School Admission Test, December 6 It is unwise to continue the career training and employment programmes administered in most prisons today.

These programmes do not achieve what they are meant evaluating reasoning 55 to achieve because most ex-prisoners choose not to pursue the occupations they followed during the time they spent in prison. Which of the following, if true, most weakens the above argument? Law School Admission Test, 7 Certain physiological changes accompany the psychological stress of telling a lie. Reliable lie detection is possible, because, with the appropriate instruments, we can measure the physiological symptoms of lying.

Lie detection requires highly trained, capable personnel. Even the appropriate instrument can be misused and abused. Numerous kinds of psychological stress produce similar physiological symptoms. This prediction is often made a full year before the vaccine is used. Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the above argument?

It is right, therefore, to extend the scheme to other motorways, since it will solve the problem of congestion on motorways relatively easily and cheaply. It is thus preferable to other possible measures, such as building new motorways or adding an extra lane to existing motorways. There are two reasons why we should disapprove of this practice. First, the availability of the scheme makes people think there is nothing wrong with supporting the carbon polluting aviation industry.

Answers to Exercise 10 are given on pp. This is a case of giving reasons why something is as it is, rather than giving reasons for believing something.

The difference is illustrated by the following report from The Independent of 17 February Richard Doll, consultant to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, said one explanation was the rising number of elderly people. They are taking the truth of that for granted, and trying to explain why this increase occurred.

What we need to know about an explanation is whether it is the correct explanation. It may not be easy to settle such a question, but there are strategies we can use to attempt to make some assessment of an explanation. One is to examine any questionable assumptions underlying the explanation.

If we can think of two or three equally plausible explanations of something, then we should be cautious about accepting any of them as the correct explanation until we have further information. We can try these strategies on the above example, although it may seem presumptuous to question the judgement of a leading authority in cancer research! For example, it could be that new medications for circulatory diseases cause more cancers, or that more cancers are caused by more women taking hormone replacement therapy.

Possibly he meant that part of the increase in the incidence of cancer could be explained by greater longevity. But the example serves to illustrate the way in which we can question explanations, perhaps reserve judgement on them until we have more information, and perhaps take steps to investigate which of various alternative explanations is the most plausible.

It is adapted from an article in The Independent on Sunday, 25 June Some old drivers are indeed incompetent, and data from the US has shown that the accident rate for drivers rises substantially after the age of Other drivers of the same age had diabetes as their only medical condition, and a group of younger drivers was used for comparison. The drivers also worked their way through a series of standard tests of mental ability, concentration and short-term memory.

The results showed that the year-olds with diabetes did just as well on the test drives and mental tests as the younger drivers. The drivers with early dementia did worse. Statistics showing that drivers in this age group have high accident rates are, the report says, at least partly attributable to people continuing to drive after they have become mildly demented.

The passage tells us in the second paragraph that data from the US shows that the accident rate for drivers rises substantially after the age of This is the fact which is to be explained, and it means, of course, that as a group the drivers aged over 70 have a higher percentage of accidents than those aged under The study did tests to assess the competence of drivers, and found that those aged over 70 who had dementia were less competent than young drivers, but those aged over 70 who did not have this medical condition were no less competent than young drivers.

This suggests that the most plausible explanation of the higher accident rate amongst drivers aged over 70 is that some drivers aged over 70 are incompetent due to dementia. Dividing all drivers into only two groups, over 70 and under 70, obscures any statistical differences in the very large under group. This is an example of how critical of statistics we must be, even when we accept them. Elderly drivers might wish to argue that this showed a high incidence of undiagnosed dementia among younger drivers!

Exercise Offering alternative explanations For each of the following passages, identify which part of the passage is the explanation, and which part is the fact which is being explained. Then suggest an alternative explanation for this fact. Do not worry if you are uncertain whether your explanation is true. Why has the divorce rate increased so much over the last thirty years?

It is because there are so many more couples these days who are unhappily married. The human race has never received a well-authenticated communication from beings elsewhere in the universe. This is because the only intelligent life in the universe is on our own planet. The number of cars per head of population in Britain continues to rise. Because the weather was so bad in Britain last summer, the number of people taking holidays in British resorts declined.

Greece has a much lower incidence of smoking-related deaths than the UK, even though Greece also has a much higher percentage of smokers. Where cigarettes are very expensive, as in the UK, people smoke the cigarette right down to the tip, whereas where cigarettes are cheaper, half of the cigarette is thrown away. Many surveys have reported that the Danish are the happiest people on earth. Of course they are, because they have very low expectations, and thus are pleasantly surprised when something good happens.

Answers to Exercise 11 are given on pp. Summary: Evaluating explanations 1 Identify any assumptions underlying the explanation. This exercise could form the basis of a class discussion. Boys are the problem. Mr Younger said some schools should take credit for implementing equal opportunities policies which had reduced discrimination against girls.

He and Molly Warrington, his fellow researcher at Homerton College, Cambridge, found that boys felt they were unfairly treated or neglected in class, although teachers and the majority of girls disagreed. Staff said boys went to considerable lengths not to appear swotty — for instance, denying to classmates they had done homework even when they had, or playing up in class.

They saw boys as unable to concentrate or organise themselves and lacking in motivation. Girls tended to be more focused, and study was not seen as bad for their image. Seventy per cent of girls thought female teachers treated boys and girls equally; only 46 per cent of boys agreed. A majority of all the pupils surveyed thought male teachers were biased towards girls, however — accepting behaviour from girls which they punished in boys.

Girls appeared to have clearer goals, said Mr Younger, which led them to focus on their work. Some boys had no idea what they wanted to do after GCSE and several had no idea what later courses to take. Serious injuries for both car users and pedestrians also increased. Indeed pedestrian casualties rose by 2 per cent overall from levels to 49, and while deaths fell by 7 per cent to 1,, serious injuries increased by 4 per cent to 11, While Britain generally has a good safety record on the roads compared with its European neighbours, the number of child casualties is proportionally higher and last year reinforced the trend, with child casualties going up by 6 per cent to 45, The increase in injuries means that the Government has virtually no chance of meeting its target of reducing total roads casualties by one-third between the early Eighties and However, it will easily achieve the target on deaths if present trends continue.

One thing that could be done quite easily is to bring the clocks into line with the Continent so that children would not have to go home from school in the dark. And then they fall asleep or make a mistake. Nowadays, many people are kept alive for much longer thanks to modern medical techniques and die later than that.

Two thirds of men and women are now classed as overweight or obese. Obesity has doubled among children, trebled among women, and nearly quadrupled among men over the last 20 years. Everyone — the doctors, the food industry, the Government and the obese — agrees that the causes are complex and the solutions multi-factorial.

It is not just about fat, 63 64 evaluating reasoning greedy people eating more than they need to and being too lazy to do something about it. But a trip to the Bluewater [shopping centre] is a neat example of a lot of the causes — and solutions. The rise of these huge, out-of-town shopping centres has only added to the culture of the car.

Bluewater is not within walking distance of anywhere — everyone drives to it. When they do get there, there are lifts from the car parks to the shops. Escalators take you from one level to another. The distance that anyone has to move under their own steam is minimal.

An interesting factor in the whole debate about obesity is that the average person actually eats fewer calories and less fat per day than 30 years ago — but does far less exercise. Parents drive their children yards down the road to school, and then carry on to their place of work.

People drive to the park to walk their dog, or to the newsagents to get a newspaper. Children in particular suffer from this. They no longer cycle to the shops to get sweets, or run down the road — they are driven there. But back to Bluewater. A glance around the food court highlights another problem — portion sizes. There has been a sharp increase in the sightings of weeping madonnas, from Ireland to Croatia, but the only one recognised by the Church is a statue of the Virgin Mary in the town of Siracusa in Sicily.

But Luigi Garlaschelli, a chemistry researcher at the University of Pavia, believes he has an explanation. The secret, he revealed, is to use a hollow statue made of thin plaster. If it is coated with an impermeable glazing and water poured into the hollow centre from a tiny hole in the head, the statue behaves quite normally. The plaster absorbs the liquid but the glazing prevents it from pouring out. But if barely perceptible scratches are made in the glazing over the eyes, droplets of water appear as if by divine intervention — rather than by capillary attraction, the movement of water through sponge-like material.

Sales of small cars fell to their lowest level for seven years last year while large vehicles secured their highest share of the market yet. Average emissions of carbon dioxide for new cars fell by 1. The fall was almost entirely due to the rise in popularity of diesel vehicles. The British average last year was The SMMT said that drivers were partly to blame for demanding bigger cars with faster acceleration and more gadgets.

It said that falling prices of new cars and rising incomes had encouraged millions of drivers to buy larger vehicles. Features such as air-conditioning and electric windows, which add weight and consume energy, have become almost ubiquitous. Safety systems such as air bags and side-impact bars had added weight while rules on pedestrian-friendly bonnet design had made cars less aerodynamic, it said.

But Friends of the Earth said that carmakers were to blame for the poor progress on emissions because they spent more promoting gas guzzlers than low-emission cars. It analysed advertising in national newspapers last September and found more than half of advertisements were for cars in the two most polluting road tax bands.

Only 3 per cent were for cars in the lowest bands. We also need to consider whether the argument relies upon evidence from anyone whose authority is questionable. This is discussed in detail in Chapter 4, which also contains exercises on evaluating evidence and authorities.

Meanwhile, here is a summary of the skills discussed in this chapter, followed by an exercise in applying these skills to some slightly longer arguments. Summary: Using the skills of evaluation 1 Find the conclusion. Think about how you would seek further information to enable you to assess the truth of reasons.

If so, are they plausible, and are they the only plausible explanations of what is being explained? Exercise Practising the skills Identify and evaluate the reasoning in each of the following passages.

Fluoride is a medication and one with well-reported side effects, such as increased incidence of osteoporosis. It is frightening to think that this question is even being raised. Karen Rodgers, Letters to the editor, The Independent, 11 September 2 Organic farming Sir: Those who believe organic food is good for the countryside and the environment should think a little harder.

To grow the same amount of food, organic farming therefore requires land that could otherwise be used for nature reserves, forests or wetlands — or golf courses and low-cost housing if we so choose. To irrigate the additional land more water is required, reducing rivers and aquifers. Moreover, since organic farms still use tractors, water pumps, harvesters and other fossil-fuel powered implements, and these have to travel over a greater area to produce a given quantity of food, they produce higher CO2 emissions.

Organic farming does the reverse, to the detriment of all. It is the right thing pragmatically and in principle too. First because of what British prisons are like. In the main, they are grossly overcrowded, very uncomfortable already and constant hives of crime-behind-bars. Men who are left with nothing to do, many of them being illiterate, currently amuse themselves with drugs, sex, constant little vendettas and a little light violence. Because of overcrowding, they spend more and more time in their cells.

Furthermore, increasingly, television means communication with the rest of us, albeit one-way communication. For the modern citizen, TV is the ubiquitous window on society, a prime source of thinking and information.

It shapes us. Now, granted, prisoners are physically cut off from society, but that is as much for our safety as for their punishment. Assuming that we hold to the idea of rehabilitation and the return of prisoners to ordinary life after their sentences, then cutting them off from social trends, thinking, entertainment and news is pointless, even stupid. Prisoners who watch television for hours are not only likelier to be easier to guard and oversee; they are also likely to end up more like the rest of us.

The second reason we approve of television in jails is that inmates would not be given them free, but would have to pay for the privilege, using money earned inside jail. TVs would be removed for bad behaviour. Prison is such a bizarre and alienating environment that anything which keeps inmates in touch with ordinary life is useful; earning and paying is useful because it increases, however marginally, responsibility.

It is what prisoners will quickly have to learn to do outside. This is, in short, a proposal which is sensible in security terms, mildly rehabilitative and — yes — humane. To help you get an idea about the type of questions asked in the exam, we have provided the sample questions that are curated from the previous year's question papers of CLAT.

Try to practice these questions regularly to improve your speed and time management skills in the final exam. Some readers wondered whether my reading of the crisis in the news media is about journalism or about the news industry. Though the fortunes of the news industry have a bearing on journalism, there is, indeed, a difference between looking at issues that govern journalism and the factors that contribute to the financial stress of the media industry. Over the last few years, I have been discussing the impact of digitalization on journalism.

The pandemic has accelerated the process of digital transformation of the news media. Therefore, these issues need close scrutiny. One of the defining elements of analog journalism was the way two crucial functions of journalism — bearing witness and making sense — complemented each other and helped people make informed choices.

When I talk about the strength of analog, I am neither romanticizing the past nor am I a Luddite. Most importantly, I do not believe in nostalgia. Literature on misinformation, disinformation, and misinformation reveals a new distinction in the minds of the citizens. Editors and journalists have to contend with a new breed of skeptics. These are the people who trust social media forwards more than evidence-based, data-driven journalism.

Their confirmation bias flows from encrypted social media platforms that are full of conspiracy theories.

Panneerselvan, The Hindu, dated August 10, ]. If anything, the novel coronavirus disease COVID pandemic has taught us to rethink our lifestyles and question our need to travel to work every day. After all, in the age of the internet, zoom meetings and webinars can be virtually conducted and physical distancing is possible. A large nature of work in cities is of tertiary nature, a major part of which can be done from home.

This can affect the way offices function and reduce the need for all employees to be physically present every day. If more firms follow suit, the need for huge office buildings and central business districts would change. Apartments cannot get bigger at the same rate, and people may not have space or atmosphere to work from home.

This would mean that more people would opt for co-working spaces close to their homes. This could be a game-changer, for it would provide the cities to better distribute their activities throughout the spaces and rid themselves of the idea of zoning.

Only a handful of professionals are allowed to function from residential zones, including doctors, lawyers, architects, etc. This needs serious rethinking.

Many more professions of similar nature that do not disturb surrounding residence and have no requirements of special services should be added to the list. Following is an array of questions to test your reasoning ability in different situations.

Answer each of them according to the question asked in each of them respectively:. If highways were restricted to cars and only those trucks with a capacity of fewer than 8 tons, most of the truck traffic would be forced to run outside highways. Such a reduction in the amount of truck traffic would reduce the risk of collisions on highways.