Editing Problem of induction (section)

===David Stove and Donald Williams===
[[David Stove]]'s argument for induction, based on the [[statistical syllogism]], was presented in the ''Rationality of Induction'' and was developed from an argument put forward by one of Stove's heroes, the late [[Donald Cary Williams]] (formerly Professor at Harvard) in his book ''The Ground of Induction''.<ref>{{cite book | author=Donald Cary Williams | title=The Ground of Induction | location=New York | publisher=Russell and Russell | year=1947 }}, {{cite encyclopedia |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-dc/ |title=Donald Cary Williams |date=2015 |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=4 March 2017}}
</ref> Stove argued that it is a statistical truth that the great majority of the possible subsets of specified size (as long as this size is not too small) are similar to the larger population to which they belong. For example, the majority of the subsets which contain 3000 ravens which you can form from the raven population are similar to the population itself (and this applies no matter how large the raven population is, as long as it is not infinite). Consequently, Stove argued that if you find yourself with such a subset then the chances are that this subset is one of the ones that are similar to the population, and so you are justified in concluding that it is likely that this subset "matches" the population reasonably closely. The situation would be analogous to drawing a ball out of a barrel of balls, 99% of which are red. In such a case you have a 99% chance of drawing a red ball. Similarly, when getting a sample of ravens the probability is very high that the sample is one of the matching or "representative" ones. So as long as you have no reason to think that your sample is an unrepresentative one, you are justified in thinking that probably (although not certainly) that it is.<ref>D. Stove, ''The Rationality of Induction'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986, ch. 6.</ref>