Inductive and Deductive Reasoning: Which One Is The Best Method?

 When detectives arrive at the scene of a crime, the first thing they do is to look for clues that can help them piece together what happened. A broken window, for example, might suggest how a burglar entered or exited. Likewise, the fact that an intruder didn’t disturb anything but a painting that hid a safe might suggest that the burglar knew exactly where the safe was hidden. And this, in turn, suggests that the burglar knew the victim.

The process described above is called inductive reasoning. It consists of making observations and then drawing conclusions based on those observations. Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach. In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.

Deductive reasoning works the other way from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation (or not) of our original theories.

Here’s a memory trick to help you: You can remember that the word Inductive starts with a vowel, as does Evidence, so in Inductive reasoning, you begin with a consonant, so does the word Conclusion, which is where you begin in deductive reasoning.