Exercise on inductive logic and deductive logic

Story on Inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning to gather

In a summer camp, fifteen children became sick during the night with stomach
cramps and fever. The next day the camp nurse and counsellor interviewed all the
children. It was discovered that all of the sick children had been at dinner that
evening in the camp. Moreover, none of the ten children had been sick who had
missed the dinner because they were away on an overnight field trip. Therefore it
appeared that the cause might lie in the food eaten at the camp dinner. In their
interviews, the staff also learned that five of the children who had the dinner had
not been sick. Therefore they wondered if some item on the menu might be the
cause. The children were asked to list their selections from the dinner menu. The
staff discovered that all those who got sick had eaten spaghetti. None of those who
stayed well had eaten the spaghetti. Therefore it was easy to infer that the problem
lay in the spaghetti. Moreover, it was learned that those who only just tasted the
spaghetti felt discomfort during the night, a child who ate half a helping had mild
stomach cramps, and a child who had two full helpings was seriously sick all night.
Thus, all in all, the staff felt it reasonable to conclude that the most likely cause of
their outbreak was something in or about the spaghetti.
Exercise 2

1. I started drinking iced coffee when I was 14. I didn’t think I’d ever become addicted.
Then, six months later, I found that when I tried to go without coffee, I’d get a
headache, and I would be drowsy and irritable. I knew then I was addicted and had to
get off the stuff. 2. It all began with a question: What if good citizenship was made
fun?

2. It was decided to test this idea to see if fun could persuade people to use a stairway
rather than an escalator. A stairway was found in a Stockholm subway station that ran
adjacent to an escalator. The stairway was redesigned to resemble piano keys with
black and white steps that would play one note of piano music for each step trodden
upon. Now a YouTube video shows people heading for the escalator, then turning
back to try out the stairs. Some even begin to dance on them. The video announces
that 66% more people now use the stairs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=2lXh2n0aPyw

3. I have been wearing a wool knitted cap for the past ten years. People think it is
strange, but it has kept me from having sore throats. Before I started wearing the cap,
I had sore throats all the time. But since I started wearing it, I have not had any.

4. Japanese government officials and auto industry spokesmen said American drivers
might be having trouble with their Japanese-made seat belts because their cars are too
dirty. They reported finding animal hair in American cars, pieces of food, and soft
drink drippings. In Japan, people do not drink or eat in their cars or even wear shoes.
This explanation for the faulty seat belts (whose release button gradually became
brittle and would not lock securely) came in response to reports that federal safety
officials in the United States were planning to recall and repair defective seat belts in
9 million cars. The Japanese manufacturers said that they had received no complaints
in Japan about the 4.79 million vehicles on the road with the same seat belts.
(Summarized from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, May 23, 1995.)
Exercise 3

The Facts

Team sport injuries reported in U.S. hospitals in 2010:

 463,000 injuries related to football

 442,900 injuries related to baseball

 421,000 injuries related to basketball

 94,200 injuries related to soccer

 36,400 injuries related to hockey

 Why Were Fewer Injuries Related of Hockey Reported?

Potential Conclusions

 Hockey is a less dangerous sport.

 People who play hockey are tougher and less likely to go to the hospital with

injuries.

 Hockey is a less popular sport, so fewer people are injured.

 Hockey is more safety conscious than other sports.

Exercise 4

Rate the following statements as true or false. If you decide the statement is false, then revise the statement to make it
a true one.

1. Inductive reasoning is also known as the scientific method.

2. You are out swimming in the ocean and you see some fish with prominent sharp teeth
swimming around you. You know that some fish with sharp teeth are predatory. You
take off without waiting around to see if they might harm you. Your decision is based
on analogous reasoning.
3. You could use inductive reasoning to put together a picture puzzle if all the pieces
were available, even if there were no box cover to show what the whole picture would
look like when it was finished.
4. There is a contest to guess how many gumballs are in a jar. You can use inductive
reasoning to figure this out.
5. Inductive reasoning could help you cook a new dish by carefully following
instructions from a cookbook.
6. Inductive reasoning can extrapolate reliable predictions from only one or two
examples of a phenomenon.
7. Counterexamples can test or refute theories or generalizations.
8. A conclusion is a theory that can lead to new facts and discoveries, but the hypothesis
itself is not a certainty.
9. Statistical evidence is always reliable regardless of the attitudes of the people who
research and present the information.
10. Major scientific discoveries have resulted from accidents that just happened to be
given close attention by a curious observer and inductive thinker.