Thursday, December 9, 2010

Generalizing

According to the book, generalizing basically means concluding a claim about a group from a claim about some part of it. I found this interesting because they way the book describes it, generalizing is something we do everyday and is how we "make sense of our world". In short, generalization are arguments, so they follow the same rules of whether or not an argument is strong, which is if it has a plausible premise. I liked the example the book used which was "28% of all smokers get cancer." This is a generalization based off findings by poll takers or scientists, and shows that it is something we always see in everyday life. Any time you watch the news, numbers and percentages are always used. These are generalizations! We use them pretty much everyday to help us make decisions. For example you could say: "It's raining really hard today, I should slow down when driving or I could lose control like last time or like many others who have sped in the rain!"

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