identifying an argument

Question

A random, nationwide telephone survey of 2,600 people asked if the respondents had ever committed a felony that had gone undetected. Less than 2 percent said yes. Consequently, over 98 percent of the felonies committed are detected.

- is it valid, invalid, strong, weak or not an argument

Answer 1

Hello Ifann,

in terms of the underlying logic, the argument isn't sound. Lets think about this like a set theory problem. We have a set of 2600 people and <2% (<52 people), but we don't know how many people out of the 2600 committed felonies (which we mean to say committed an act that would be called a felony by a court of law, but this is a question of the legal definitions which is not the immediate issue). Lets say for the sake of ease that the real number is 51. So if the total number of people who committed felonies is 101, then 50% of felonies go undetected. The problem with this argument is that it is missing this key part of information. All that can be drawn from this argument is that <2% of the population say they have committed a felony and went undetected.

To improve this argument you'll need the number of convicted felons that makes up the sample pop. I would also recommend, if relevant, I would flesh out the meaning of committing a felony without getting caught.