Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Interesting from Ch. 14
What I found interesting from chapter 14 was the basic idea of generalizing. It caught my attention because we use generalizing almost every day, similar to every other concept we've read from the text. From the book, it says that generalizing is when we conclude a claim about a group (the population) from a claim about some part of it (the sample). The text also says that when we generalize, we make arguments. Therefore, our generalizations are open to criticisms and oppositions. A specific example about generalizations are ones that lead to stereotypes. Stereotypes about Asians being bad drivers or smart students are derived by generalizations made by observing small samples. Some people may have gone to schools where Asians are at the tops of their classes, therefore strengthening their assumptions that all Asians are smart. Some may see reckless Asian drivers and assume that all Asians must drive the same way. Overall, generalizations can be good because they help us to interpret data or anticipate what's most likely to happen but they also have their cons.
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I totally agree with you; I thought that generalization was the concept that was most interesting in Chapter 14 of Epstien’s text. I, just like you, generalize just about everyday and catch myself doing it countless times throughout the day thanks to this chapter and this course. I agree with you as well about how generalizations can have pros and cons to just about every situation. I thought it was great how you used the text as and the examples that are inside the text because there were some thing that I was not completely sure about. You explained everything very well and made everything very simple.
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