 Hello and welcome to Open for Insight, the free open online course about understanding how we can gather insight. To begin I want to ask you three questions. How do you know what's real? How do you know what's true? And how do you know what's fact? Those are some really tough questions. Figuring out what's something and what isn't is not always so easy. We deal with these kinds of questions more in our everyday life than is perhaps apparent at first sight. Let's look at some examples. First, consider social media. People post things about themselves and their lives online. Some of these things are definitely real and true in facts. For instance, pictures from someone skiing holidays might be real and they give an impression of a sporty and fun-loving person. But you never know if that's all there is or if specific information is left out. For instance, maybe those snowy peaks were covered in artificial snow, revealing that the Traveller values winter sports fun over environmental impact. Here's another example. Often, when you buy cosmetics, you will find some testimony on the cover proclaiming that 9 out of 10 users would recommend the product or that 86% of users felt they had smoother skin or wider teeth or something like this after using the product for a certain amount of time. But is such information evidence that the product will work and will it work on you? Similarly, consider the case of manufacturer specifications for products that you buy. For example, car manufacturers provide some estimation of how much fuel the car will use over a specified distance. However, when you drive yourself, you might find these promises varying quite a bit from the mileage that you can achieve. Finally, consider the current debate about fake news. Some people claim that the media are reporting stories that are untrue and that they are blind to issues they don't like to cover. At the same time, media outlets are fact-checking political figures, suggesting that claims made by powerful politicians may sometimes be untrue. So in a world where it's apparently totally unclear what's fact and what's not, how can you tell? Interestingly, a similar debate is underway in science. Which scientific findings can we trust? How can we generate reliable, robust scientific insight? Tough questions tend to be tough to answer. But this course will give you an idea of how to differentiate between solid insights and shaky claims. For that, we cover three main areas. First, we ask a rather philosophical question. How can we learn things about the world? Then we'll introduce the concept of experiments, the current gold standard for trying to achieve solid insights. Second, we ask what makes a good experiment? We talk about how to make your own experiments and about the merits of using experiments to gain insight. Finally, we ask about shaky insight. We identify markers of claims you don't want to trust too much and also identify signals that can help increase our trust in claims. All in all, we're going to work on understanding the principles of solid insight to help you critically evaluate empirical evidence in everyday situations and navigate the world of facts and truths with these principles in mind. With hands-on examples, exercises, and the goal to break down the concepts of solid insight into understandable and application-ready messages, this course is made to help you answer tough questions yourself. Come join the course.