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“This is the best post on apologetics ever!”

While at first glance--or from intuition--you might brush my statement aside as ludicrous, there is actually a fallacy represented here by my hyperbolic enthusiasm for my own writing: a hasty generalization.

Hasty generalization: generalizing about a class based upon a small or poor sample.

In committing the hasty generalization fallacy, there are normally two problems involved:
#1.Too small of a sample
#2. Not a representative sample

Going back to my original statement, I am committing a hasty generalization because I do not have access to all the posts written on apologetics in order to know if the post I just wrote is the best post ever. The sample size for my inference would be too small.

Let’s look at the first problem: too small of a sample size.

If the sample size is too small, we risk it not being representative of the broader class which we are referencing. In our political campaign examples, a Democrat candidate might claim that because Republican Randy Presidential Hopeful demeans other candidates then all Republicans are demeaning to other people; therefore a democrat cannot vote for any Republican. But Republican Randy doesn’t represent how all Republicans would treat Democrats (or other republicans, independents, etc). The sample size here is too small to make an accurate judgment. However, I’ve heard this kind of inference from members of both parties!

Let’s look at the second problem: not a representative sample.

Perhaps the person making the generalization has a large sample size but it may not be a sample that aptly represents the class.

Example: All plumbers are rich. I just went to the international plumbers convention and studied 3,000 plumbers there. They all made over $100,000 a year.[1]

Though 3,000 plumbers sounds like a big enough sample size, the sample does not aptly represent all plumbers.  What about the plumbers who do not make enough to go to an international plumbers convention?  This sample size is probably only taken from wealthy plumbers and therefore is a hasty generalization.

Be on the lookout in the presidential campaigns for hasty generalizations; including throwing around poll percentages, tossing out figures supporting a view, and attributing ideology to entire classes of people.  When you hear these figures you should ask: Where are you getting that from?  What is the source of your information?  What were the control factors used in the study (ie. how many people were surveyed and who were the people surveyed and did the survey have an apt sample of the representative class)?  These are important questions to answer in order to avoid manipulation through the logical fallacy of hasty generalization.

[1] Hans and Nathaniel Bluedorn.  The Fallacy Detective: Thirty Six Lesson on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning.  (Muscatine, IA: Christian Logic, 2002, 2003), 122.