Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning

God by so callously torturing one of his creatures or you might just realize that

you got too much homework to do tonight either way there's cats somewhere

sighing a huge meow of relief when it comes to reasoning there are two ways to

do it by using inductive reasoning or by using deductive reasoning those are the

main ways of reasoning and of course you could also try using

seductive reasoning but you better look good in a nightie yeah sorry there pal [Man in a pink nightie on a bed]

well deductive reasoning starts with a statement about something big and then

it whittles it down to something smaller for example if you say that all tractors

are red and your dad has a tractor well you can deduce that your dad's tractor [Man on a tractor]

is red and there's like a communist subtext in there somewhere people we're

sure of it all right well however in order for it to work the original

statement has to be true otherwise you're practicing faulty reasoning and

you're gonna arrive at an untrue conclusion as it so happens your dad's

tractor is pink although he insists that it's called light salmon thank you very [Dad driving a pink tractor]

much inductive reasoning on the other hand starts with something small and

then moves outward to something bigger like my sister has a pierced ear she is

in a band so everyone in the band has a pierced ear well we haven't interviewed [Band members with pierced ears]

everyone in the band but that we find that

conclusion unlikely inductive reasoning tends to result in some sloppy

conclusions like the one demonstrated here it isn't without merit though

inductive reasoning is a good way to come up with a hypothesis about

something and then you can use deductive reasoning to apply that hypothesis and

see if it sticks like you might say that anvils are affected by gravity and [Anvil falls]

feathers are affected by gravity therefore everything is affected by

gravity it all seems pretty legit unless one day we find something that isn't

affected by gravity a concept that would probably hit us like a ton of bricks and [Brick hits man in the face]

yeah in that case we have to revisit our conclusion let's try another example and

see what happens inductive reasoning the Sun is a star

the Sun is not in my coffee mug therefore no stars are in my coffee mug

all right first of all it's just kind of weird now let's use deductive reasoning

in the reverse order isn't that an add subtly for Starbucks

and maybe not...all right and we say there are no stars in my coffee mug the Sun is

a star the Sun must not be in my coffee mug haha success! [Man discussing sun and stars with coffee mug]

the Sun is indeed not in my coffee mug although our tongues beg to differ

ouch