Chapter 14, Generalization-

Generalizing is something we all do in our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. We all somehow end up making generalizations about things. As stated in our textbook, generalizing is when "we conclude a claim about a group, the population, from a claim about some part of it, the sample." Overall, generalizing is making an argument. Chapter 14 goes in depth about what generalizing is and how a generalization can be good and bad, which is something I did not know before reading the chapter. On page 289, the book gives us the premises needed for a good generalization:
     - The sample is representative
     - The same is big enough
     - The same is studied well
These are all premises to ensure that the generalization made about an argument is good. Overall, even though everyone uses generalization without really realizing it, the book did a great job at describing it and going over all its aspects.

My favorite & least favorite thing about this class...

My favorite things about this class were that first off it was online, and second my group members. I have to say that I really enjoyed taking this course online. Even though sometimes I had a hard time keeping up with the blogs, I enjoyed writing every week and the process of posting it online. I also liked taking the tests online and being able to do everything from home, at my own paste. My second favorite thing from this class was my group members. Most of the times, when I get assigned a group, I somehow always end up with people who do not put as much effort as I do. However, the group that I had for this class was really great. We all got along great and actually had a lot of fun every time we met. We were really understanding of everyone's schedules and were always able to help one another when one of us was not understanding something or was not able to make a meeting. Overall my group members made this class a lot easier and more fun.
My least favorite thing about this class was the fact that we had to wait 12 hours in between posts. I know that speaking for myself, I have a very busy schedule as I'm taking 6 classes and have ice skating practice every single day. I therefore wish that we could have done all the posts at once. It would have been a lot easier for me personally.

What I've learned...

To be honest, when I first started this course, I was not expecting to finish it with so much information which I could actually use in real life. For whatever reason, I thought that I would retain the information for a while, but that eventually, I would not use the skills we learned. I have to say that I was gladly surprised when I found out that it actually was not the case. It turns out that I have learned a lot from this class. Going over all the different types of reasonings, as well as fallacies was truly interesting. I may not remember all the different names for each types, but I have learned that there are many different ways to reason, each with their own purposes. The one thing which I learned in this class and found the most useful is how to communicate effectively with group members. I have learned from this class how to communicate well and how to express my thoughts and feelings in such a manner that would improve the outcome of a situation. I was overall very surprised when this course came to an end because I realized that I had learned a lot more than I expected to.