Quotes About Inference

I had," said he, "come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.

I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain, said he. Results without causes are much more impressive.

It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis.

Science of Deduction

Let me run over the principal steps. We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations.

Pray interrupt me if there is any inference which is not perfectly clear to you. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital. Your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated. -Sherlock Holmes- -The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes-

Eliminate the impossible, and what ever remains, however improbable, must be the truth - Sherlock Holmes

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Each may form his own hypothesis upon the present evidence, and yours is as likely to be correct as mine.

An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

You don't know what goes on in anyone's life but your own.

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

One great function of Bible verses: To keep us from drawing false inferences from other Bible verses.

Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; 4 the latter, of Inference.

Geometry is a Deductive Science.

Every induction is a syllogism with the major premise suppressed.

One can, to an almost laughable degree, infer what a man's wife is like from his opinions about women in general.

Those who are unacquainted with the details of scientific investigation have no idea of the amount of labour expended in the determination of those numbers on which important calculations or inferences depend. They have no idea of the patience shown by a Berzelius in determining atomic weights; by a Regnault in determining coefficients of expansion; or by a Joule in determining the mechanical equivalent of heat.

in the case of the given numbers 1, 2, 3, everybody can see that the fourth proportional is 6, and all the more clearly because we infer in one single intuition the fourth number from the ratio we see the first number bears to the second.

People end up seeing actors hanging around with somebody and they link them together.

Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character, but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined.

This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It's called closure. In our daily lives, we often commit closure, mentally completing that which is incomplete based on past experience.