Question

Explain the difference between representative and relevant evidence?

Answer 1

Relevant and representative are different terms and should never be used to mean the same thing:

• “Relevant” describes how the evidence relates to the claim.
• “Representative” describes how the evidence relates to the object of study (that is, the thing, person, group, or phenomenon that is being described).

Another way to say this is,

• “Relevant” describes internal relationships within the essay.
• “Representative” describes external relationships between the essay and the real world (whatever part of the world it’s focused on).

Relevant Evidence

Evidence is relevant when it has a definite relationship to the claim.

Notice that I said definite. The relationship does not have to be direct or clear, but it has to be there. Of course, a direct and clear relationship is preferable, but it’s not required.

Here, too, evidence may be 100% accurate and yet worthless, because it does not relate to the claim.

Irrelevant evidence is one of the most common problems in arguments, and is used at times by unscrupulous writers and speakers in a deliberate attempt to confuse or mislead. However it’s more commonly used by people who are confused themselves and think they see a relationship where there is none.

Representative Evidence

Representative comes from the word represent. Evidence represents, or gives us a picture of, the topic, and representative evidence gives us a complete and undistorted picture.

Another word for representative is typical. Representative examples are those that are typical, or most like the majority of other items in the same group.

Representative evidence is absolutely essential. One reason is simple and practical: we rarely have room to include every single example of whatever we’re talking about. Therefore, the examples we do use should be the ones most like all the others—most typical, most representative.