I found this chapter interesting because of the fact that personal experiences are a form of evidence. Most of the time personal experiences are irrelevant due to the fact that they are sometimes bias and can work against you and your argument if your experiences seem that way. Though the book does mention that if you are going to use a personal experience then you must have evidence to back up that claim. The only downside to using a personal experience is that will not stand as stall as other types of evidence in an argument because there isn't much backing it up if say we were to use an experiment. On the other hand, personal experiences can gather an audience if it is definitely interesting enough and can hold the attention of the readers.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Chapter 16
In Everything's An Argument, Chapter 16 told us about the many different types of evidences we could use when creating an argument. To make it short, the chapter goes on to discuss that, the most effective type of evidence is the evidence that relates most to what your paper is about. Since I am an engineering student and I wanted to write about something in my field, one of the better types of evidence would most likely be experimental evidence. Besides there being experimental evidence there is, personal experience, observations, interviews and many more types of evidence that Chapter 16 goes on to discuss. In this chapter, I found it interesting to know that under the "using evidence effectively" section, you may have the most evidence from interviews, observations and so on, but if you haven't woven it into your argument it just remains as a big pile of data laying around.
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I like how you wrote about your own field and determined what sort of evidence is most effective for it, but I think you should have stated how you came to that conclusion. It would explain the idea of experimental evidence a bit better, but it is a bit self-explanatory so I understand why you wouldn't. Still, you could explain why other types of evidence do not work as well as experimental evidence does.
ReplyDeleteI would not put down personal experiences as evidence, however. There are fields where personal experiences are pretty much the only type of evidence available, such as cultural anthropology. The other types of information usually comes from observations, but that type of evidence is somehow not as compelling as the ones that come from personal experience. It does take a lot of work to use the evidence in a way that it could be considered to have any argumentative value, but it still is more effective than the observations. Also, I would not say it is irrelevant evidence if it goes against your argument. There are often times when it goes against your argument, that a new argument could be found and helps develop a better understanding.
Since you're an engineering student, I can understand why you would put down personal experience. It really would not help you make your argument more compelling. So, I liked your blog entry overall because it made me think of how effective evidence is really depends on the type of field you're in.
I liked how you mentioned that data is useless unless it is formed and applied to an argument. We can see that this is true especially in science labs, where in lab reports there is a "data" section and an "analysis" section to explain what the data means. Data without explanation is, as you said, just a pile of numbers, while theory without data is an unsupported argument. One is useless without the other.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your arguement that personal experience doesn't work for engineering as well as experimental data, but that doesn't mean it is worse in all situations. I am also studying physical sciences, so I understand the overwhelming importance of data, but when I'm writing for a Humanities class I try to stay away from data. The problem with numbers is that they're impersonal, which is good for science because it eliminates bias. However when you're trying to play to emotions data can hurt your cause. This proves your initial point that the kind of evidence you use entirely depends on the audience and argument.