Knowing how to think

I've always valued accurate information and have sometimes, to a fault, thought poorly of sources of information that was less then accurate. In high school for example, I would regularly tune out of sermons in church if I was able to pick out one fact that was wrong. We had a lot of guest preachers so everybody got a fresh shot. If he said Paul wrote something to Timothy, then quoted a verse from Titus, I didn't care if a similar thought had been expressed to Timothy too, I was gone. If he said Pippin's troops stopped the Moors in the battle of Tours I didn't care if his point was just to give a quick overview of relevant history before what I was later told was an excellent sermon. I was busy thinking about how great I was for knowing that Pippin had died 18 years earlier. I guess I was an arrogant little snot. I think my problem was that I didn't have to do much myself so I could critique other people without a point of reference.
Now that I have more things to do I'm learning to appreciate having the right way of thinking even when the details aren't spot on. The other day, I was looking into using a tool called an infrared spectrometer on a sample of mine at school and needed to know about how deep the rays would go into my sample. I asked a contact at a local university, we'll call it the University of North Dakota, who had used that instrument before.
"hmm so infrared is shorter wavelength..." they responded
"I think it's longer"
"ok so that shouldn't penetrate as far.."
"I think it should go deeper"
My question was answered as completely as I needed it to be with two incorrect facts and a correct way of thinking. Without me, they could have found the answer online in a few seconds but without them I would have been lost.