This web of influence has interesting ramifications from the perspective of the types of reasoning patterns that it supports.  Consider Forrest Gump.  A priori, we believe that he is pretty likely to be smart.  Evidence about two classes that he took changes our probabilities only very slightly.  However, we see that most people who took CS101 got A’s.  In fact, even people who did fairly poorly in other classes got an A in CS101.  Therefore, we believe that CS101 is probably an easy class.  To get a C in an easy class is unlikely for a smart student, so our probability that Forrest Gump is smart goes down substantially.