Abstract
This paper views empirical research as a search for illustrations of interesting possibilities which have occurred, and the exploration of the variety of such possibilities in a sample or universe. This leads to a definition of “illustrative inference” (in contrast to statistical inference), which, we argue, is of considerable importance in many fields of inquiry – ranging from market research and qualitative research in social science, to cosmology. Sometimes, it may be helpful to model illustrative inference quantitatively, so that the size of a sample can be linked to its power (for illustrating possibilities): we outline one model based on probability theory, and another based on a resampling technique.
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Wood, M., Christy, R. Sampling for Possibilities. Quality & Quantity 33, 185–202 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026435213337
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026435213337