Talk:Inductive Fallacy

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Example

From an anonymous contributor:

A very common example of inductive failure is the surprise fire drill. The boss announces that one day next week there will be a fire drill in the office. The inductive reasoner considers that it will not be on Friday because it is the last day of the week and thus the drill will not be a surprise. Then by induction the drill cannot be on Thursday either, nor Wednesday...

This is not an example for the fallacy. The boss' announcement is not a known fact, and general principles are not involved either.

Rather, the fallacy here is that the reasoner takes "I will be surprised by the drill" as a known fact, which it is not. It's just one of the intentions of the boss. Drawing hard conclusions from non-facts will lead into error. --tk (t) 12:04, 9 June 2006 (BST)