Generalizing from a Single Example: Many Would Argue That Our

question 15

Essay

Generalizing from a Single Example: Many would argue that our concept of life and intelligence is severely limited by the fact that we have only the "single example" of the Earth. Do you agree with this view (address the questions of life and intelligence separately)? To what extent do you feel that the search for extraterrestrial life is biased by the example of life on the Earth? Does the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life suffer more or less from the same bias?

---

Definitions:

Nonlinear Relationships

Nonlinear relationships describe scenarios in data where the change in outcome variable does not correspond to a constant change in predictor variable.

Scatterplot Form

A graphical representation of data using Cartesian coordinates to display values of two variables for a set of data.

Clusters

Groups of objects or data points that are similar to each other within the same group but dissimilar to objects in other groups.

Scatterplot

A type of graphical representation that displays values for typically two variables for a set of data, using Cartesian coordinates to display the values.