PHL 214 Chapter 8: Critical Thinking Textbook-Chapter 8
16 Aug 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Intended to provide only probable support for its occlusion, earning the label of. Strong if it succeeds and weak if it does not. Can fail to be strong in two major ways: (1) sample too small or (2) sample not representative. Samples may be too small to yield any reliable information: this is known as a hasty generalization: drawing a conclusion about a target group on the basis of a too small sample. The larger the sample, the more likely it is to reliably re ect the nature of the larger group. The more homogenous a target group is in traits relevant to the property in question, the smaller the sample can be; the less homogenous, the larger the sample should be. A sample must be a representative sample it must resemble the target group in all the ways that matter. If it does not properly represent the target group, it is a biased sample.
