Reasoning Analytically
Analyzing the music, utilizing context, time period, and composer to justify the decisions you make in your interpritation of the piece.
Analyzing the music, utilizing context, time period, and composer to justify the decisions you make in your interpritation of the piece.
My Current Understanding
My current understanding of Reasoning Analytically is that one should be able to make and understand a claim that's directly supported by evidence which is connected to the claim through solid reasoning. Reasoning Analytically would allow you not only to make solid judgements and claims, but also to pick apart the ones presented to you to judge whether they are credible, or not. You can use Reasoning Analytically and can most clearly appreciate it in things like research, or debate. In research, you have to analyze your source and figure out if it's credible by looking through things like the motives of its creation, its relevance based on its time of publication and the field of study. By Reasoning Analytically in research, you can understand the things that are said, why they're being said, and most importantly, whether that information is true. In things like debate, you constantly have to Reason Analytically to create solid arguments based on reasons and evidence and also to undermine your opponent's arguments and understand where their argument is weak and push on that weak point until it collapses. To Reason Analytically, you have to understand each part of the thought and everything that relates to it and make claims based on evidence that is connected by reasoning.
My Growth
When I first began at SEEQS, I didn't have any conception of what Reasoning Analytically was. However, I realize now that I did it on a day-to-day basis and I still do to this day. You see, I’ve always been quite headstrong. I always am under the distinct impression that I am right, and anyone who challenged that was simply a pure and utter imbecile. Because of that, whenever someone challenged my divine opinion, which happened fairly often as you may guess, I would snap into a state of mind in which I was prepared to tear my oppressor apart using the skill which I had then. Which I would say is a close cousin to Reasoning Analytically. Going into 6th and 7th grade, there were many projects, especially in my ELA classes which utilized CER. CER stands for claim, evidence, and reasoning, which is a tool completely based on reasoning analytically. We would write papers about some belief we had, but structure the paper in a CER format, making a claim, presenting evidence, and then connecting the two through reasoning. CERs helped nurture my ability to Reason Analytically as I worked my way through the grades. All of that culminated in my debate project for EQS Clean Energy in my 8th grade year.
My Project
EQS Clean Energy was investigating alternatives to fossil fuel energy around Hawaii and the rest of the world. One of the projects that we did to help broaden our knowledge and understanding of different sorts of clean energy. This project started with a Google form sent out to each member of the EQS. This form asked you to select which clean energy source was best suited for Hawaii. You could choose from tidal/wave, geothermal, solar, nuclear, or wind energy. People were then split into equal groups based on their opinions. I had selected wind as my first choice, so I was put into the wind group in which there were five other people. I was unanimously nominated as the group leader and we began our research. We spent the next 4 EQS classes doing intensive research into all of the benefits of wind energy, the cons of wind energy so we could defend against them, the pros of other energy sources to argue them, and primarily, the cons for every other energy source. And another person in my group, Eve, did most of the research. We visited countless sources and bundled all of our collected knowledge into a Google doc. Each debate had a specific structure.
There would be a 5 minute opening statement from the first group, then, the second group would have a 2 minute rebuttal. The first group would have a 2-minute defense, and then the process would repeat except the second group would do the opening statement and defense, and the first group would do the rebuttal. Then finally at the end, each group would have a five minute closing statement. We were told a few days before the debate was to happen that, since there were five groups, there would be two debates of one on one. Then, one of the winners of those two groups would have a debate against us and then, if we won, we would have a debate against the final group. If we lost, the people who won against us would go against the final group. We were at an advantage and a disadvantage because everyone else would have to win three debates to win the whole thing. We would only have to win two. But that advantage was made negligible because, unlike everyone else, we wouldn't know who our opponents would be. Everyone else after that day could prepare specifically for that group. We had to do that for every group. I held off on writing the scripts until we had only two possible opponents. The geothermal group went against the wave group and won. Then, the solar group went against the nuclear group and won. The solar group was chosen to go against us the next day.
That night, I compiled all of the knowledge we had gathered from our research and crafted it into an informing and authoritative opening statement, and a powerful, inspiring closing statement. I also outlined rebuttal and defense. On the day of the debate, we had thoroughly overtaken the the solar group. We then had 30 minutes before our next and final debate against the geothermal group. I worked as hard as I could to create a script for the upcoming debate, but it was nowhere near the quality of the former one. We ended up obliterating the geothermal group as well so we won the whole thing. I don't really think that wind energy is objectively the best power source for Hawaii, but that just goes to show how good I am at weighing evidence and delivering it with clear reasons.
How It Connects
This project perfectly represents many aspects of Reasoning Analytically. Most obviously, this project is a debate. Our arguments were all based around Claim Evidence Reasoning or CERs which are the core of Reasoning Analytically. Our claim in this case is that wind energy is the best source of energy for Hawaii. That is the claim everyone is arguing for their respective power sources. To properly Reason Analytically, we should be making judgements based on reasons and evidence.
For our evidence, me and my partner Eve did extensive research into the positives of wind energy. Specifically why it was best suited for Hawaii. This evidence gathering through research also requires analytical reasoning to determine whether it's credible, whether it's relevant, and whether it will adequately and powerfully support our claim. For example, we found a source that said that wind energy was a very good option for Hawaii, but after analyzing the source further, we found that the source was from the electric companies that are pushing for solar farms around the islands. This would have given this source a bias toward saying wind was best and might be providing weak evidence. By Reasoning Analytically within our research, we ruled out a source that would have weakened our argument.
I was solely in charge of constructing our reasoning. I learned who my group would be going against a day before our debate was to happen so I had to create an unbeatable argument utilizing all the evidence Eve and I had gathered. I crafted the argument with claim evidence reasoning. I began our opening statement by outlining the problem, putting a feeling of hopelessness in the judges about our situation, which afterward, I would resolve with our claim. You can see in the first few lines we are talking about the fossil fuel problem in Hawaii. Then, we state our claim and immediately start listing evidence.
Each individual statement was constructed with the evidence and reasoning parts of CER and each statement was addressing an individual positive of wind energy. For instance, in this statement by Orion, “Wind also provides good paying jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. In 2020 alone, over a hundred and twenty thousand people were employed through wind power in the US. Given expenses and the large homeless population in Hawaii right now, this could be revolutionary.” You can see how even that individual statement was constructed with CER to perfect our argument. I start by stating that wind energy provides well paying jobs. Then, I provide evidence from the US census about how many people were employed by wind energy. Then, to tie it all together, give that relevance and power to our argument for Hawaii by noting the crisis of homelessness we have, and how beneficial good paying jobs could be.
There were however, instances where we failed to Reason Analytically. We ended up getting away with it in this particular instance but it was still a lack of Reasoning Analytically. During our debate with the geothermal group, I made a point about how people being reliant on geothermal could be catastrophic if volcanic activity occurred or some other unpredictable natural event disabled the production of electricity. Part of Reasoning Analytically is the weighing of evidence, and if you think about it, I was undermining my own argument by bringing up unpredictable events such as weather. You see, our argument was almost entirely based on nearly every downside of wind energy being eliminated if we put them offshore. But, with sea levels rising and hurricanes and storms becoming more common, unpredictable power shutdowns would be just as plausible if not more so for wind energy than geothermal. Like I said earlier, no one ended up catching us on that which I suppose means they weren’t Reasoning Analytically either in the sense of weighing evidence but it was a close call. All together, this project was a great opportunity to effectively utilize all the skills within Reasoning Analytically throughout my time at SEEQS by doing extensive research, then crafting that argument which paid off and won us the debate.