Searching Data for Predictive Variables: A Set‐Theoretical Approach*
Donal E. Muir · Sociological Inquiry · 1969
A common task of the scientific investigator is to search out factors which will predict the presence or absence of some variable attribute in which he is interested. Procedures for such searches are spelled out in Mill's famous canons of discovery. A set‐theoretical analysis of these, however, discloses unnecessary inconsistency and difficulty, and leads to a single canon which extracts maximal information concerning causal factors from arbitrary sequences of cases, while reminding the researcher of the limitations of finite samples of both subjects and measures.