Talk:Inference

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Statistics

This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Statistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of statistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
If you have questions about the project, please ask them on the project talk page.

Basic list – Portal – Article – Category – WikiProject – Stubs – Cleanup

Philosophy portal

This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.

??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

Additional information:

Related task forces (core areas):

Logic

[edit] RevertiBold text proposal

Personally, I don't agree with the broad deleting recentely made upon this article. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it explained a lot more things than it does now, it was more complete and I can't see any improvement in this new version. If nobody has some reason against it I would revert to the previous version. Chiara 08:35, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Symbols are not readeable

The universal quantifier symbol and the therefore symbol are not readeable. They are presented as a ∀ character... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.123.174.199 (talk) 12:44, 15 April 2007 (UTC).

as they should be nowadays.

[edit] TeX'ization of formulae

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
------------------
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

All A is B
All C is A
----------
All C is B

∀ X, man(X) → mortal(X)
man(Socrates)
-------------------------------
∴mortal(Socrates)

Or in its general form:

∀ X, A(X) → B(X)
A(x)
------------------------
∴B(x)

∀, the universal quantifier, is pronounced "for all". It allows us to state a general property. Here it is used to say that "if any X is a man, X is also mortal".

∴ is the therefore symbol which denotes the conclusion.

Consider the following:

All fat people are musicians
John Lennon was fat
-------------------
Therefore John Lennon was a musician

I much prefer the boxed versions. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:32, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deduction

This article has a lot on the subject of Deduction and very little on any of the other forms of inference. I propose moving a lot of the material on deduction to the article of that title, and expanding the material on other forms of inference. I'll begin this on May 30, 2008 if I hear no objection before then. Rick Norwood (talk) 00:35, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

What are the other form of inference you have in mind? --Philogo 01:13, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

See the introductory paragraph to the article. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:28, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Error

"But false premises may, by accident, lead to a true conclusion."

Is this a reference to logical accident or simply a very poor choice of words? It seems to me this connection is not there. In this sentence "by chance" would be more appropriate! --84.250.188.136 (talk) 09:14, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the editor meeant to say not "But false premises may, by accident, lead to a true conclusion" but rather "It is possible to have a valid argument with false premises and a true conclusion, eg All Men are machines, all mechimes are mortal therefore all men are mortal.

The example given is strange too, unless John Lennon actually was a fish. --Philogo 11:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

No, logical accident is something else entirely. I agree, however, that "by chance" is better than "by accident". Piilogo's formulation and example are also good. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:21, 18 June 2008 (UTC)