Note: This supplementary page is for enrichment/informational purposes. It provides a few examples of inductive reasoning types, some of which receive focus in the final three modules of the course.

Statistical Reasoning supports likely claims/conclusions but cannot guarantee certainty. Processes involving statistical reasoning often include complex analysis of properties and populations, which, though detailed and intricate, support probability, but not a certainty. Here’s a simple example, no complex analysis involved:

We hid 45 peanut butter and 5 marshmallow eggs. for the hunt.
Homer found only one egg.
/∴ It’s highly likely that Homer’s egg is peanut butter.

Analogical Reasoning involves highlighting perceived similarities between two things as grounds for transferring further attributes or meanings from one (the source analog) to the other (the target analog.) Analogical reasoning is quite common; it’s often used in moral reasoning, and in reaching legal decisions based on precedent.  It is also a handy ‘everyday’ reasoning model, for example:

Bandicoots and opossums are marsupials with extra upper teeth.
Opossums eat small animals and plant matter.
/∴ Bandicoots probably eat small animals and plant matter.

Generalizations are arguments that advance from knowledge about a subset of members of a group to conclusions about all members.  At best, there can be a high probability of a conclusion from generalization but no certainty.  For example:

The Texas ranger bushes in my yard blossomed after all three monsoon storms this summer.
/∴Texas rangers always blossom after it rains.

Cause and effect claims assert a connection between two events.  In a particular argument, either the cause or the effect may be known, and the one that is not known is claimed to be the case. Here’s an argument with a known effect and an inferred cause:

I find that my leftover pizza is gone.
No one has been in the apartment except my roommate.
/∴ My roommate ate my pizza.

And this argument has a known cause and an inferred effect:

I washed my car in the afternoon.
That evening there was a rain shower.
/∴ I knew before even looking that my car would be speckled with dirt spots.

The argument with the inferred effect is making a prediction, a claim about the future. No matter how certain any claim about the future seems – that the sun will rise tomorrow – it is still inductive reasoning lacking certainty.