 However, the problem of induction is the inverse problem. We want to infer not what the sample will be like, with a known hypothesis, rather we want to infer a hypothesis about the general situation or population, based on the observation of a limited sample. The probabilities of the candidate hypotheses can then be used to inform predictions about further observations. In the case of the urn, for example, we want to know what the observation of a particular sample frequency of white balls, \(\frac{n_w}{N}\), tells us about \(\theta\), the proportion of white balls in the urn.