PHIL 12 Lecture 6: Imprecision and Confidence Levels
Document Summary
Phil 12 lecture 6 imprecision and confidence levels. Last time: statistical information indispensable, statistical information helps us make decisions and interpret ourselves, are we normal, view ourselves within the bigger picture, statistic: numerical portrait of what a society is like at a given time. Inductive generalizations: not foolproof, elections, russell"s chicken, chicken infers that the farmer will be there every day to feed it, since the farmer has been there for x amount of days. Property p if there is a correlation between possession of. S and possession of p: s are the relevant secondary properties, secondary properties: any properties distinct from the primary property that might by relevant to our research. In a population of 1,000 people, 668 have brown eyes (2/3). Introducing bias because the people who don"t need the incentive are not going to take the survey: there is no getting around having to consider relevant secondary properties when judging the representativeness of samples.