Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence is a process ubiquitous in the lives of individuals. In order to make good decisions and function effectively, one must make distinctions between events that are likely to occur and those that are not. If the morning sky is dark and threatening, one logically concludes that the forecast is for rain and thus one carries an umbrella. A student attends class on the assumption that the professor will be there. Most of the decisions a person makes involve subjective estimates of the probability of various events occurring based on specific observations. Statistical inference uses probabilistic reasoning in a more objective and precise fashion and allows the researcher to account for chance error in drawing inferences from a small set of observed data to a larger set of unobserved data. Suppose a researcher is interested in the attitude of taxpayers toward the use of state dollars for subsidizing a federally mandated education program. It would not be possible to question every taxpayer in the country; therefore, the researcher would want to survey the attitudes of a random sample of taxpayers to infer characteristics about the population. The fundamental goal of statistical inference is simple: based on information obtained from a sample of elements, the researcher draws conclusions about a population by inferring that what is observed ... log in or subscribe to read full text