The first thing that I learned that I found remotely interesting was where Chapter 8 evaluated general claims. This part was called "Vague Generalities," and in this area, the words "some" and "all" are being discussed: All meaning whole and some meaning part. Most people tend to confuse these two, substituting "all" for the word "some," when it means two completely different things. For an example, my little brother told me, "All of these fruits are nasty!" when I made him eat some for his daily dose. Since he generalized every type of fruit into his sentence by saying "all" instead of "some," this makes his argument invalid. If he were to replace all with some, then his argument would've been a better one: that some fruits are not good while others are.
The second thing I learned from this chapter has to do with these arguments' contradictions. The opposite of these arguments are usually weak and invalid; an example of this would be:
"All math classes give at least 2 hours of homework a day."
"Sharon's class always gives at least 2 hours of homework a day."
"Sharon's class is a math class."
This is a weak argument because you do not know for sure whether or not the class Sharon is taking is a math class. Just because her class gives 2 hours of homework a day like the other math classes does not automatically mean hers is a math course as well. One way to make this argument a valid, strong one would be to write it like this:
"All math classes give at least 2 hours of homework a day."
"Sharon is taking a math course."
"Sharon is given at least 2 hours of homework a day."
From this, you can easily see how much stronger the argument is, and how it is easily made into a valid one instead of a weak, invalid one that it originally was.
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