generalisation

«generalisation» in Mova's school dictionary: a statement about all or most things of a kind, based on… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a generalisation, generalisations; generalisation — uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) A generalisation is a statement about all or most things of a kind, based on some examples. tree →

2) A sweeping generalisation is one that is too broad and unfair, like «all boys hate reading». tree →

3) (maths) A generalisation is a rule that works for all cases, like «the sum of two even numbers is always even». tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths, making generalisations from patterns («each term is 3 more than the last»); in science, conclusions from experiments; in English and PSHE, avoiding unfair generalisations and stereotypes.

examples

• It is a generalisation to say that all cats hate water. tree →
• From the pattern we made a generalisation: odd plus odd is even. tree →
• Be careful with generalisations about people. tree →
• Scientists test a generalisation with more experiments. tree →
• «Everyone loves pizza» is a generalisation. tree →

note

UK spelling «generalisation», US «generalization». Countable. Maths: a generalisation must be checked; one counterexample shows it is false.

In the corpora

• Turning one example into a rule is called a hasty generalisation.
• Making a rule from one example is called a hasty generalisation: one time tells you very little.
• Judging a whole group by a few of its members is a hasty generalisation.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «generalisation» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.