Originally posted by MxRacerCamXXXL:
so am i to understand that you consider less than 100 people to consitute a "large portion" as you put it? because 100 out of 3M or more also constitutes a large portion, eh?


Again (v.23904852 X 10^35), I'm inferring that there is a large portion of Pistons fans who are conspiracy theorists. I've shown throughout this thread that it's not a bad inference to make. If I wanted to get an idea of what percentage of Pistons fans were conspiracy theorists, I would draw a representative sample and survey from there.

Originally posted by MxRacerCamXXXL:
an analogy:

i've seen 1 C6 ZO6 out of the 1000 corvettes that i have ever seen, therefore, a large portion of corvettes are C6 ZO6's.

see how this is flawed on several levels? not only is it illogical to apply this percentage to all corvettes, it's also a poor example of taking a representative sample of the population of corvettes.


It's not flawed, since only a very small number of the Corvettes you've seen have been C6 Z06s. If you had seen 50 or 100/1000, then you could say a large portion of Corvettes are C6s.

And your analogy to the Corvettes is a very obvious fallacy of questionable analogy. Let me re-phrase it for you:

Have you seen a lot of Corvettes? Yes. Are most of those Corvettes C6 Z06s? No.

Have I seen a lot of Pistons fans? Yes. Are most of those conspiracy theorists? Yes.

Let me know if you need any further assistance with understanding philosophical logic. I'd be happy to tutor you via PM.

Last edited by Davo; 06/15/05 04:55 PM.