Saturday, April 09, 2005

Plus one

The incompetence of the King County Elections division keeps growing, one ballot at a time. Last week they found 93 previously uncounted ballots. Just yesterday, one more surfaced.

I am going to go ahead and make the obvious prediction: Inductive reasoning* says that there will be more, oh yes, there will be more.


*I was corrected by Banks when I originally said this was deductive rather than inductive reasoning. I have a knack for mixing those details up. My apologies to my philospher friend.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is inductive reasoning. You always get this wrong. Let's have a lesson: Deductive reasoning is where you take certain premises, put them together, and the conclusion MUST be true. For example, Premise 1) Socrates is a man, P2) All men are mortal, Conclusion) Socrates is mortal. See how the conlusion must be true? If P1 and P2 are true, the conclusion has to be true. This is deduction.

Induction is similar, but if the premises of an inductive argument are true, the conlusion is LIKELY to be true--not certain to be true. For example, P1) The streets are wet, P2) When the streets are wet it has usually rained, C) Therefore, it has probably rained. See how the conclusion is not a MUST but is LIKELY? The streets could be wet because kids had a waterballoon fight or a firehydrant burst. Inductive reasoning, for instance, is how we know the Sun is going to rise tomorrow. We don't know it with certainty, but it is a pretty good bet because it always has in the past. It is not a LOGICAL NECESSITY. But, if Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal, it IS a logical must that Socrates is mortal.

--Banks

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