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Hasty Generalization |
| Description: | ||
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| The argument draws a conclusion from a sample that is too small, i.e. is made up of too few cases. | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "In both of the murder mysteries I have read, the District Attorney was the culprit. All mystery writers like to make lawyers out to be villains." | ||
| "We have now had five dates together. It is clear we are well-suited. Let's get married." | ||
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| Discussion: | ||
| The size of the sample needed to draw a valid conclusion depends, in part, upon the size of the class from which the sample is drawn. The larger the size of the main class, the larger the size of the necessary sample. However, sample size does not increase at the same rate as the class size, so the proportion of a very large class that must be sampled is much smaller than the proportion of a very small class. For this reason, a sample with only one or two members is never a fair sample, even of a very small class. | ||
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| Classification: An Error in Sampling (an inductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the minor premiss). | ||
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| Source: I first became aware of this fallacy from W. Ward Fearnside and William B. Holther, Fallacy: the Counterfeit of Argument (1959). However, this is clearly not the earliest description of the fallacy, since the name and description also appears in Max Schulman's short story, "Love is a Fallacy," published in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951). I have not so far been able to identify an earlier source. Please contact me if you can point me to a potentially useful clue regarding the original source of this fallacy. | ||
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Go to: WELCOME EXPLANATION of PRINCIPLES TABLE of FALLACIES EXERCISES INDEX