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Completeness requires that you account for the information that you have. Are your samples or data missing key elements? Have you met the test of representativeness? Have key parts of the reasoning process been omitted? Check especially for the warrants, or underlying premises, to make certain that they are clear and explicit, not implied or left to inference. Can you account for any contradictory evidence? How do you explain data that go against your conclusion? The requirement of completeness is often overlooked by people who, when they find just what they are hoping to find, stop investigating.
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Coherence is the last guidepost to good decision making. It means that you evaluate messages partially on the care and precision that are used to express them. Do the premises, the data, and the conclusion all relate to the same underlying concept? Can you follow the development of the ideas? Is there a pattern or sequence that builds logically from one step to the next? Coherence of expression communicates a clear goal and is perceived by listeners and readers as a sign of both the intelligence and the logical force of the ideas. Therefore it is important to keep ideas focused on the topic and clearly linked.
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Evaluating Sources. Your reputation is important so that others around you know how to relate to you. In the same way, the reputation of the sources of information you use to draw your conclusions about the world is very important. Did you get your information from Time magazine or from a clerk in a store? From your instructor? Each source of information can be evaluated by some standard tests, which generally involve reputation.
For example, Time magazine is known and respected for being honest in its research and truthful in its reporting. The magazine certainly has an editorial bias; but when citing a statistic found in Time, you can be certain that it was thoroughly checked before it was printed. However, any conclusions that the magazine’s editorial writers drew from that statistic would have to be evaluated as opinions – informed, educated opinions, yes, but not at the same reliability as the statistic itself. In the same way, when a friend recommends a movie, a restaurant, a teacher, or a book, you need to evaluate the reliability of that friend’s previous recommendations and respond accordingly. Does your friend have the same taste in film, food, faculty, and fiction as you do? If your friend’s recommendations have been reliable in the past, you can trust them again. Generally, the longer you have known the source, the more reliable the information is likely to be.
. Evaluating Supporting Materials. The test of recency of information is especially important when you evaluate supporting materials. Time changes data. What was true about a certain place, person, or event a few years ago may no longer be true today. You may have an excellent textbook, written by an outstanding professor in the proper field, but if it is about Middle East politics or the former Soviet Union, you’d better check its date of publication. Even maps may become incorrect in a very short span of time. To the four elements previously discussed – premises, consistency, completeness, and coherence – we now add the fifth. When you evaluate information, be sure that it is current. A simple thought such as drawing a conclusion about a restaurant may be incorrect if the chef left between the time your friend went there and the time you received the recommendation.
. Critical and Creative Thinking. Although you may be tempted to see these two kinds of thinking as separate, they can actually enhance each other. Some intuition and imagination can help you to discover premises and warrants, whereas wild creativity can lead you down many unproductive routes if there is no evaluation of the ideas at some point.
Brainstorming is a good exercise for demonstrating the reciprocal activities of creativity and criticism. Brainstorming has two parts. At the first, a group of people come up with an idea. They do so without restrictions or evaluations. In about ten minutes, or once they have generated several ideas, they stop and move on to phase two. In this phase, ideas are examined for their ability to solve a problem or for their practical use.
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