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12.3: Chapter Exercises

  • Page ID
    95117
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    Chapter Exercises

    1. List three real life cases that involve probabilities and gambles. How do you try to determine how likely various outcomes are in these cases?
    2. What are some of the factors that are relevant in trying to decide whether to quit smoking?
    3. Would you want to live near a nuclear power plant? How dangerous do you think such plants are? How could you find out more about how hazardous they are?
    4. What connections are there between probabilities and the assessment of risks (like being in an automobile accident or receiving anthraxcontaminated mail)?
    5. If an argument is deductively valid, then adding additional premises to it cannot destroy its validity. By contrast, inductively strong arguments can be weakened by adding the right sorts of premises. Give an example of how an argument that isn’t valid but is inductively strong can be made weaker, then stronger, then weaker again, by the addition of premises

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