Math Vocab: Inductive and Deductive Reasoning.

Math Concepts: Inductive, and Deductive Reasoning, in a nutshell

In my many, many years as a professional math tutor, i noted one of the most common stumbling blocks of students, was that their textbooks were geared to "mathmatecian's mathmetecians" That is to say, unless you were already good at math and comfortable with the jargon, the book wasn't going to be much help. Most of my capability as the LEGENDARY math tutor of Suny Canton, was just being able to translate the book from "mathese" as one of my professor's used to put it, and into plain, simple english.

So as a public service, that I *ahem* used to get paid union wages for,

Here are some basic math concepts explained in common, easy to get language.

Inductive, and Deductive reasoning.

I'll start with this. Despite how SCARY Inductive, and Deductive reasoning may appear to sound in your math book, they are BOTH things that you already know how to do! You just don't know that the words, match with the skill you use them with.

For example, let's try this.

1,2,3,4,X,6,7.....

What would you say X is?

Yah, i know. You aren't a dummy. X is 5. Big surprise.

What you MIGHT be surprised by, is that you just used INDUCTIVE REASONING!

See, INDUCTIVE REASONING is just a big fancy terms for following a pattern, and choosing an answer by looking within, or "between" the parts of the problem, and making a "good guess" at it. English major's and students of Latin, may note that the Latin root "duc" meaning to "lead" combined with the prefix "in" means that we are using reasoning that is leading in the evidence given.

For everybody else, if your eyes glazed over in the above paragraph, just remember: Inductive Reasoning, is a big fancy word that means we are looking for a pattern IN the information, or evidence given, alone, and making a guess.

How about DEDUCTIVE REASONING THEN?

Must be really hard right? I mean that's what Sherlock Holmes did, and he was some kind of  genius!

Actually, Deduction is quite elementary, my dear students. is using GENERAL RULES, to PROVE a point. In other words, it's fairly basic procedural logic.

For example:

It's against the rules to hit people in the FACE at school.

People who are caught hitting people in the FACE at school, get detention.

Tom hit Sally in the face.

Therefore we can DEDUCE, using the "general rule",

That since Tom, hit SALLY, in the FACE, that if he is caught, he will get detention.

That's all there really is there to this one. Yet not understanding this, and other simple basic math vocabulary, is a major hindrance to math students everywhere. So, as a public service, I shall continue to dive through my old college math books, and explain more and more BASIC NEED TO KNOW CONCEPTS, that well, you shouldn't have to be a math nerd to understand. And in fact. Don't. Have fun!