Quiz 5 Critical Thinking

Forms of inductive reasoning:

• Enumerative induction (generalization)

  • Definition: when you draw a conclusion that can be stronger or weaker based on several cases you have observed 

• Sample

  • The people being observed

• Target

  • The group I would like  to find out about

• Relevant property

• Problems that can up with enumerative induction ( when are these arguments weak?)

  • When is it weak?

    • Same too small ( fallacy: Hasty Generalization, conclusion driven from a small sample)

    • Is the sample representative of the target?

      • Is it a biased sample?

      • Self-selecting sample

        • volunteers/ when people choose themselves to be surveyed 

Today:

• Polls

  • How does polling go wrong?

    • Sample too small

    • Unrepresentative based on location

    • Can Miss count

    • The margin of error (the range if we conduct the poll multiple times)

      • Mean, median, mode

        • Mean: average

        • Median: middle value in a series

        • Mode: most common answer

      • You need to poll at least 1,000 people if it is scientific

• Arguments from analogy (analogical induction)

  • Analogy - comparing things

  • When is it Strong or weak?

  • Questions to ask to identify if it is strong or weak:

    • Question 1: in what ways are the things compared really similar? (What are relevant similarities?)

    • Question 2: are they dissimilar in any important or relevant aspect?