Reconstruction Case

1) RECONSTRUCTION

1. Result of sample: 9% of the 75 students who live in campus residences from University of BC, University of Western Ontario, SFU, and University of Alberta, have affirmed that they have been caught behaving immorally during a test.

2. Accuracy premise: if 9% of the 75 students who live in campus residences from University of BC, University of Western Ontario, SFU, and University of Alberta, has affirmed that they have been caught behaving immorally during a test, then 9% of 9% of the 75 students who live in campus residences from University of BC, University of Western Ontario, SFU, and University of Alberta, have cheated on exams.

3. Conclusion about sample: 9% of the 75 students who live in campus residences from University of BC, University of Western Ontario, SFU, and University of Alberta, have cheated on exams.

4. Representativeness premise: if 9% of the 75 students who live in campus residences from University of BC, University of Western Ontario, SFU, and University of Alberta, have cheated on exams, then 9% of Canadian University students have cheated on exams.

5. Final conclusion: 9% of Canadian University students have cheated on exams.

2) Evaluation

1. Evaluating the Accuracy Premise:

This survey is about the cheating on exams, which is quite embarrassed to the students. And if the question requires people to reveal embarrassing facts about themselves, they have chances not to telling the truth. So the here may come the problem of dishonest survey answers.

Moreover, this is also an Inaccurate Tests. The measured property, which is they have been caught behaving immorally during a test, is not a good test of the target property, which is have cheated on exams. There may be someone cheated but not be caught, and that shows the inaccurate of the survey.

2. Evaluating the Representativeness Premise:

First of all, the Sample population in this argument is 75 students. The sample is too small to represent the whole Canadian university students, and the final conclusion didn't have margins of error (approximately).

Second, we do not know whether the sample was selected randomly from the target population, all Canadian university students. The sample could be one the same major or something which is unrepresentative. Another point is, only four universities cannot, at any time, represent all the university in Canada. And the author did not mention it as well.

Third, it is all a poorly described samples, we have no idea about those students' background information or how they are chosen. Obviously, this argument is weakened by these points.

So, in all, this argument is rather weak in my point of view.