Critical thinking is a set of skills and procedures useful for assessing the validity of a wide variety of claims.  These skills are useful in many circumstances:

• in weighing evidence in a legal trial
• in evaluating political rhetoric, campaign speeches, etc.
• in evaluating advertising and marketing materials
• to improve one's ability to avoid various types of quackery and fraud
• to gain a better understanding of alternative points of view; tolerance

Unfortunately, critical thinking is not taught in the public schools; as a result a large portion of the population is unable to weigh evidence when called upon to serve on juries, being instead easily swayed by irrelevant emotional pleas, elects incompetent (or worse) politicians, buys ineffective goods and services, believes all manner of superstitions, and is too quick to indulge a variety of prejudices.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, Schick & Vaughn, 1995, ISBN 1-55934-254-4
  • An excellent, easy-to-read introduction (see excerpts below)
• Clear Thinking, Hy Ruchlis, 1990, ISBN 0-87975-594-6
  • Another easy-to-read introduction (see excerpts below)
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, 1996, ISBN 0-345-40946-9
  • includes the famous "Baloney Detection Kit", see below
• How To Lie With Statistics, Darrell Huff, 1954, ISBN 0-393-09426-X
  • How to avoid being bamboozled by liars; a classic little book, now in its 46th printing
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward R. Tufte, 1983, ISBN 0-96-139210-X
  • Chapter 2 illustrates many gimmicks used by those who wish to distort information presented in graphical form; learning to recognize these is the first step in avoiding being taken in by them
• Critical Thinking, Francis Watanabe Dauer, 1989, ISBN 0-7607-0137-7
  • A formal, technical, and thorough treatment of the subject (see excerpts below)
• Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences, John Allen Paulos, 1988, ISBN 0-8090-7447-8 (hardcover), 0-6797-2601-2 (paperback)
  • Specifically about the numbers with with we are bombarded every day
• Sceptical Essays, Bertrand Russell, ISBN 0-415-07919-5
  • see "On the value of Scepticism", below
• Skeptical Inquirer, ISSN 0194-6730
  • A periodical which focuses primarily on claims of the "paranormal"

Sampler:

• Excerpts from How to Think About Weird Things
• Excerpts from Clear Thinking
• Excerpts from Critical Thinking (might not display correctly in some older browsers)
• Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit"

Web Resources:

• On the Value of Scepticism (introduction to Bertrand Russell's Sceptical Essays)
• Practical Skepticism with links to other resources including the Skeptic Ring

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