Quiz 2 (from 2/13/03) answers.

1. A target population is the population about which a conclusion or generalization is to be made. The sample population is a percentage of members of the target population who are utilized to generate data for a conclusion or generalization about the target population.

2. Inductive argumentation is reasoning whose conclusion “goes beyond” the content of the premises. That is, inductive arguments, unlike deductive arguments, do not guarantee the truth of their conclusions.

3. An unrepresentative sample is an instance of the fallacy of irrelevant reason because when a sample is unrepresentative, it means that the information drawn from the sample is drawn from a group whose “characteristics” have nothing to do with the conclusion drawn. A small sample may be representative or unrepresentative. That is, a small sample may include members of the target population, just not enough of them to draw a conclusion legitimately. Or, a small sample may be composed of members that are not representative of the target population. When this is the case, “irrelevant reason” takes precedence over the question of the size of the sample.

4. A contingent truth is one whose denial does not result in a logical contradiction. This is unlike a necessary truth, one in which the concept of the predicate is already contained in the concept of the subject of the proposition.

5. The reason that the argument on the quiz is invalid is that disjunctive statements (weak, inclusive disjunctions) are false only when both of the disjuncts are false. So in the case of giving a quiz today or giving a quiz tomorrow, and there being a quiz today, it does not automatically follow that there will not be a quiz tomorrow. It is possible that a quiz can be given on both days. But if you know that there will be a quiz today or a quiz tomorrow, and that there was not a quiz today, then it must be the case that there will be a quiz tomorrow. The latter case is a disjunctive syllogism.