Deductive Reasoning

Question 1

What is deductive reasoning

Answer 1

a chain of reasoning to reach a conclusion

Question 2

What makes up deductive reasoning

Answer 2

Premises that lead to a conclusion

Question 3

Inductive Reasoning

Answer 3

Specific to general

What you’re observing is logically true but may or may not be realistically true

Question 4

Provide an example of inductive reasoning

Answer 4

Basket of mangoes are on the table you want to determine if the basket is raw or ripe. Pick out two and examine them. Pick up one and determine that it’s raw. You pick up a second mango and observe that it is also raw. Based on the two raw mangoes, you can conclude that all of the mangoes in the basket are raw. We arrived at a general conclusion.

Question 5

Using inductive reasoning, parse out your argument

Answer 5

Statement 1: Mango is a fruit (specific statement)

Statement 2: The box is full of fruits (specific statement)

Conclusion: The box is full of Mangoes (general conclusion)

Question 6

Why is the conclusion of the mangoes a sound inductive reasoning argument

Answer 6

Both statements 1 and 2 are logically true

But realistically may or may not be true if the basket happens to have other fruit in there beyond mangoes

Question 7

What is Deductive Reasoning

Answer 7

Logically true

Realistically true

Question 8

Using the Mango example provide 2 statements that illustrate deductive reasoning

Answer 8

Statement #1: All mangoes are fruit (general statement)

Statement #2: All fruits have seeds (general statement)

Conclusion: Mangoes have seeds (specific conclusion)

both statements are logically true and realistically true

Question 9

Inductive Reasoning: What is conjecture?

Answer 9

Conjecture is a hypothesis that has not been proven. Conjecture must be proven for a particular case.

Question 10

What is exploratory data analysis?

Answer 10

It’s use data to sort out what we don’t know for form a hypothesis. (we’re exploring in the dark)

Question 11

What criteria can you use to evaluate a hypothesis?

Answer 11

Relevance
Likelihood
Testability
Parsimony

Question 12

What does parsimony mean?

Answer 12

An explanation of a situation or thing is created with the fewest assumptions. The Law of Parsimony advocates choosing the simplest scientific explanation that fits the evidence.

Question 13

Describe the criteria for using RELEVANCE to support a hypothesis.

Answer 13

Ask the question, will knowing if the hypothesis is true or false advance our business objectives? Will it lead to actionable results?

Question 14

Describe the criteria for using LIKELIHOOD to support a hypothesis.

Answer 14

How strong does our exploratory analysis support the hypothesis? We support hypothesis that is strongly supported by data rather than those that are weakly supported. We like even less hypotheses that are not supported that isn’t supported by data at all, although sometimes we may want to test them out.

Question 15

Describe the criteria for using TESTABILITY to support a hypothesis.

Answer 15

The key question is, can we construct a test of the hypothesis? If we cannot test our hypothesis, it will remain an article of faith, and we won’t know how reliable it is. We’ll probably never know for sure if the hypothesis is true but testing it will help us determine how much confidence we can place on it.

Question 16

What does X —> Y mean

Answer 16

A hypothesis that is both actionable and testable or if we do ‘X’ then ‘Y’ will happen. If we can change X and measure whether Y has actually happened, we can test our hypothesis.

Question 17

What is another name for Parsimony

Answer 17

Occam’s Razor

Question 18

What does Parsimony or Occam’s Razor mean?

Answer 18

To explain a lot with just a few simple assumptions. If you can answer a lot of relevant questions with few assumptions, your hypothesis is parsimonious.

If you need to make a lot of assumptions to answer one question, your hypothesis is less parsimonious.

Keep. It. Simple.

Question 19

Within the context of testing, what type of analysis is it?

Answer 19

Confirmatory Data Analysis

Question 20

What is Confirmatory Data Analysis

Answer 20

When you test your hypothesis to determine if it’s likely to be true or false. Typically, you do not want to reuse the data which led to your hypothesis to test it. Insteady, design a new experiment or use a new data set to test your hypothesis.