PART IV:  WORKING WITH INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

     Though the distinction is far from neat, let us distinguish 
between the collection of knowledge and the analysis of 
knowledge..  Whereas Part III discussed how to increase our 
stocks of ideas and information,  Part IV discusses the mental 
operations that we ought (or ought not) apply to the stocks of 
knowledge that we possess, in order to draw out the meaning of 
the information that you have in hand.  One group of analytic 
methods are deductive, procedures that use only the information 
that you have created, plus a set of rules that are determined in 
advance.  This group includes classification, and the application 
of logic and mathematics (including some statistics).  The other 
group of procedures includes explanation, causal determination, 
and extension of the results to new situations.  This latter 
group depends upon the analyst's use of additional knowledge and 
judgment, whereas the former group is limited to the material at 
hand.  
     Classification, discussed in Chapter 41, often is an 
important and difficult process.  It deserves more credit than it 
gets.  Together with the related operation of measurement, it 
molds the raw material of observation into forms that we can 
analyze.  Classification is a kind of deductive method; it uses 
the characteristics of each item to be classified, plus the rules 
established for the classification, to determine the handling of 
each item.      Chapter 42 explains the nature and use of the 
main deductive methods -- logic and mathematics -- to draw new 
and useful conclusions from existing information, including 
information about the classification of various elements we are 
working with.  
     The various processes of interpreting the associations 
observed in the information in hand -- explanation, prediction, 
causal attribution, and others -- overlap each other to some 
extent, but they also differ.  Figure IV-1 diagrams the 
connections among them.  Chapter 43 discusses the processes of 
explanation and the determination of causality.  Both processes 
begin with the raw information about the relationship between two 
sets of facts -- say, data on the movement of bathing suit sales 
and on the number of weddings -- and choose the additional 
interpretations (if any) to attach to that relationship and that 
particular set of facts. 
                           FIGURE IV-1
     Chapter 44 discusses the extension of the interpretation  to 
new situations not included in the original information.  If you 
have just learned that your new fertilizer will increase the 
growth of soybeans in the Midwest, should you conclude that the 
same thing will happen in the Atlantic states and in India?  And 
of course prediction of the future is a crucial extension of the 
information we have available from the past.  Will the Orioles do 
as well in the second half of the season as in the first half?  
Chapter 44 provides a set of principles for forecasting 
accurately.  It also points out the main causes of error in 
prediction of economic and social phenomena.  
     Chapter 44 also discusses and analyzes the concept of 
causality, which is sometimes difficult to determine, and 
sometimes difficult to interpret.   
     Chapter 45 discusses various pitfalls that may ensnare our 
thinking, and especially our judgments.  There are lots of 
different ways we can befoul our thinking -- logical fallacies, 
linguistic traps, faulty conclusions due to insufficient 
information-gathering, and uneven attention to the information 
that is available, among others.  Unbiased and error-free 
thinking is impossible in principle, and perfect rationality is 
not even a good standard of comparison.  Chapter 45 offers some 
guides around the pitfalls so as to arrive more closely at mental 
clarity. 
     A person can take in only a tiny fraction of the sensations 
and information that are available and relevant to our 
activities.  And our machinery for processing the information 
impinging upon us cranks out crude approximations at best.  
Therefore, the state of our knowledge and judgments is 
necessarily imperfect, and almost necessarily it is 
systematically biased in one direction or another.  
     A variety of factors -- notably the traps embedded in the 
language we employ, and the influence of our hopes and fears upon 
our judgments -- often corrupt our judgmental processes so that 
we do not even come close to the feasible quality of thinking.  
Chapter 47 contains suggestions about how we can improve our 
judgments. 
     Habits and self-discipline are the subject of Chapter 48.  
They may be the most important learning we do, because they 
control the learning of other subjects.  If a child lacks the 
discipline to do homework or practice shooting baskets left-
handed, that child will not get to be a skilled practitioner of 
algebra or basketball.
     It came as something of a surprise to me that so much of 
Part IV is drawn from my text on research methods.  The 
techniques that are appropriate for collecting and analyzing 
scientific data are also appropriate for the data that we work 
with in our everyday lives, both private and public.  And the 
errors in our everyday judgments stem from the pitfalls that are 
much the same as the obstacles that must be overcome if a 
scientific study is to be be valid. 
     This similarity between valid scientific and everyday 
thinking has been emphasized recently by psychologists who study 
"cognitive thought" -- that is, the processes with which we infer 
conclusions from the data that impinge upon our lives (e. g. 
Nisbett and Ross, 1980.  [Schacter?]).  This is one of the 
welcome converging movements among the branches of knowledge.  
Cognitive psychologists also discern cost-benefit evaluations in 
our everyday thinking which are similar to the cost-benefit 
evaluations of obtaining more or better information which are a 
central feature of managerial economics.  The students of mental 
disorder who group under the label "cognitive therapy" also see 
cost-benefit processes at work.  This is another such movement of 
convergence. 
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