Generalizing

Going into this, i thought i knew what generalizing was but it was a little different than i had thought. We are generalizing if we conclude that a claim about a group, the population, from a claim about some part of it, the sample. To generalize is to make an argument. Sometimes the general claim that is the conclusion is called the generalization, sometimes we use that word for the whole arguement. Plausible premises about the sample are called the inductive eveidence for the generalization. That is how the book chooses to explain this subject. Before i read this, i had a good idea of what a generalization was. I always thought that it was kind of like putting a whole group of people together just because they have one thing in common. Turns out i was pretty much right because after reading this ection, not too much of it was different than what i thought it was prior to reading it. It was a very interesting section and i enjoyed it.