Inductive Reasoning
The Basic Idea
We engage in inductive reasoning every day, often without even noticing it. Put simply, inductive reasoning is the act of forming a generalization based on a set of specific observations.1 It begins with a premise, such as “all the Anatomy majors I know want to study medicine,” which leads to a conclusion, such as “all Anatomy majors want to attend medical school.” This, of course, is not necessarily the case; perhaps an Anatomy major wants to pursue a career in academia, or change their field of study altogether. The conclusion could be made stronger by removing the absolute and amending the line of reasoning to be: everyone I know majoring in Anatomy wants to study medicine, therefore, most Anatomy majors want to study medicine.
Inductive reasoning is a tool we use every day in order to make sense of the world around us. However, it also underlies the scientific method, which is the basis for how research is conducted. Researchers collect data – specific observations – from which they form hypotheses – generalizations – that inform further research.2
It is important to make the distinction between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. While inductive reasoning is referred to as “bottom-up reasoning,” because it starts with specific observations that lead to a generalization, deductive reasoning is known as “top-down reasoning,” because it begins with general principles that lead to specific conclusions.3 An example of deductive reasoning is: all students within the Faculty of Science must take an introductory Biology course, and the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology is within the Faculty of Science. Therefore, all Anatomy majors must take an introductory Biology course.
Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge—knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.
– William Stanley Jevons
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
