Chp. 14

3). Pick one concept or idea from any point in the semester, or in Chapter 14, that you found useful or interesting. 

Chapter 14 is about Generalizations.  This concept seemed similar to inductive reasoning where a person takes a sample or specific events and then uses these sample observations to draw a general conclusion.  We naturally do this.  Generalization may seem to become bias, which will conclude the generalization to be weak or unplausible to believe.  Epstein states that "a sample is representative if no one subgroup of the whole population is represented more than its proportion in the population.  A sample is biased if it is not represented" (Epstein p. 284).  In addition, there is haphazard sampling which is "choosing the sample with no intentional bias" (Epstein p. 284).  We cannot be sure whether there is bias or not so we use random sampling to get a representative sample.  With random sampling every possibility has an equal chance on being representative in the sample.  This way, we are able to eliminate bias and properly generalize observations we make in order to draw conclusions.