Reasoning Basics – 5 : Inference

An inference can be divided into the following four parts :

There are three things to be remembered about Inferences :

• It is always the reader’s inference
• They are never given to you hence implicit in nature
• There can be multiple inferences in any given argument

Students are generally confused between a conclusion and an inference. The following table would help you identify the difference between the same :

 

Reasoning Basics-5: Argument

The word argument is very often used in reasoning questions. When we use the word argument in reasoning based questions it does not refer to the verbal argument two people can have.

An argument in reasoning is a combination of premise/fact , assumption and conclusion.

The following equation would help you understand the concept of a reasoning argument a bit better :

Following are a few examples of an argument :

 

Reasoning Basics-4:Conclusion

The definition of a conclusion can be divided into four parts :

There are three things to be remembered about a conclusion : Conclusion

• It is always the author’s conclusion
• There is only one conclusion in any given argument
• Conclusions are generally given (hence the term explicit is used with it)

Conclusion based questions can be a part of Critical Reasoning or part of the Statement-Conclusion questions in CET.

Reasoning Basics-3 : Assumption

Let’s look at an example to understand the definition of an assumption :

You can download the printable format of this from the following link : Assumptions

Hence an assumption would be any statement based on a fact which is used to derive the conclusion.

There are three things about the assumption that one needs to keep in mind while solving any assumption based question :

• It is always the author’s assumption
• It is always implicit in nature
• There can be multiple assumptions in any given argument

It can also be said that a conclusion is valid only if the assumption is right. In short it can be said that reasoning is right only if the assumption is correct.

Hence to a large extent assumptions form the foundation of Reasoning.

 

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