The Deduction Guide

Shoes are such a vital piece of information to an inquisitive mind that it is one of the first things one would look to when seeing a stranger. They are ranked with hands and face in terms of what I first look to when I should glance at someone. Here are some things to look for:

Type of shoes. This may sound elementary, but you would hardly look twice at dirty work boots, while high heels shoes with a fair amount of grime may attract staring even from the less observant sector of the populace. In either case, do not let the type of shoe predominate your data. Dirt on a sandal is just as important as dirt on dress shoes. Data shouldn’t have scales. It simply is.

Clean and unworn: probably new shoes. Compare newness and cleanliness of shoes to that of the clothes. The gap (or lack thereof) in such a feature would be suggestive.

Clean and worn: older shoes, but the fact that they are clean means that this person most likely lives in the city, where they are far less likely to accumulate dirt and other debris.

Dirty and unworn: newer shoes, but examine the dirt. Is it of the same color as the dirt in the vicinity, or is it foreign? It could be the dark, wet earth of fertilizer or the fine, tan dust of drier regions. Dirt can tell you much if there is enough for you to gather the data necessary for deduction.

Dirty and worn: work boots. But be careful, the fact that they are worn and dirty would suggest less about the person’s financial status and more on their view towards spending and personal effects.

Look to the obvious creases and cracks in the rubber. Are there any? If so, one can infer alot of bending over/physical activity in those shoes, as the act of doing so will crease or crack the weaker rubber linings. If not, then either that person is strangely inactive or they have a tight schedule and a dedicated workout time. With a different pair of shoes, obviously.

Look for scrapes or scratches that ware down the harder edge of the rubber sole. Location and prominence can indicate exactly how often this person may have reason to scrape their shoe. In a dry environment, this may indicate a dog.

To avoid punishment/consequences.

To avoid a confrontation and general unpleasantness of the situation.

To be liked.

To be sociable.

To get their way, to gain something.

To protect privacy.

To pump their image up (personal or professional).

To avoid an extra effort.

As a passive-aggressive “punishment” or protest.

To damage other people’s reputation.

Because it’s a part of their job.

To cover up insecurity.

Sometimes it’s not just one reason, but a number of them.

For example, a sales person might be telling you that an awful shirt looks good on you because it’s a part of her job to give complements to customers and because she would get a comission (a gain) if you buy the shirt.

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The first of a few infographics about memory.

Gunshot wounds infographic

“Obviously”

Okay, so we’ve learned about the concept of Deduction and about observation and what to look for, time to start drawing conclusions. This is when things get fun. It’s also when people start making a ridiculous amount of mistakes, so i’m going to give all you some precious advice to guide you in the right direction when you start

How many times has anyone heard Sherlock say “obvious”? Think about it, he uses this word pretty loosely. Think about every time you’ve read or heard a deduction, be it from me, Sherlock, or any other deductionist out there, think about how unbelievable and confusing the deduction sounds. Now think about  the moment when the deduction and the thought process are explained, you should notice both the way it all fits together, how everything has an explanation and a logic basis that leads to a conclusion, and, specially, the simplicity of the facts and connections that lead from one conclusion to another. 

Why specifically? because this is exactly what this lesson is about, the main problem when people start learning deductions is they overcomplicate themselves. They see how Sherlock or any other deductionist achieves these amazing and huge deductions, which sometimes appear completely unrelated with the facts and evidence given to them, and they want to replicate these results, without realising there’s an extremely long chain of thought connecting facts, deductions, conclusions, probability, and many other factors, just to get to that single amazing deduction that is presented to whoever’s listening. Now you have to understand, long doesn’t mean overly complicated, after all deduction is, at it’s core, just logic. 

All you have to do is go for the logical and probable conclusions. Once you observe the evidence think of questions like “how’d this get here?” “what does this mean?” “why did this get here?” etc. and answer them in a logical, obvious way, this will get you further than you may think here’s an example from Sherlock’s deductions

(A Study in Pink, 1x01, Jennifer Wilson (pink lady) deduction)

fact: her coat is wet

why is it wet? she probably was under the rain

fact: there’s an unused umbrella in her left hand pocket

why not use her umbrella if she’s under the rain? something probably  isn’t letting her use her umbrella, what is it? it could be any number of things

fact: under her coat collar it’s wet

why would it be wet under a coat collar which is usually turned down? obviously because it wasn’t turned down, why? probably because of strong wind, which would explain why she didn’t use her umbrella

fact: her coat is wet, no rain in local area recently

we know she probably was standing under heavy rain and strong wind, we know those conditions haven’t been present in our local area, so she’s obviously not from there, but we know she can’t be from very far away because her coat is still wet, and a wet coat would take approximately 2 or 3 hours to dry, all we need to do now is to check the weather within the radius of 2 or 3 hours of travel time, this would tell us where she’s from

(Bold = facts and deductions)

You can see how from little pieces of information we fill out blanks until we end up with way bigger chunks of information. and this continues, as these are new facts, which in turn could trigger more deductions, giving us even more information, but more on that on the next 2 lessons. Now you have layed out how we get from seemingly unrelated facts, to crazy and unexpected conclusions, not by making huge leaps, but with little steps and following trains of thought. it’s extremely important to remember this, if you don’t you’ll find yourself jumping to conclusions that are usually total nonsense. NEVER JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, always have evidence and a logical and at least fairly obvious reasoning to ALL of your deductions. 

Turned out alright I think. Next time I’ll make the text larger and maybe condense it a little more, but for what it is it’s pretty good.

Any comments or suggestions let me know,

Need a gift for your fellow Sherlockian friends? There’s still time to order a copy (or seven!) in time for Christmas!

Order now before it’s too late!

 11 Must haves for any aspiring consulting detective:

Notebook, preferably a pocket notebook. Used for writing down observations and theories. At the time, you’ll think “I don’t need to write this down, I’ll remember it”. You won’t.

Pen. Goes with your notebook. Pencils are ok, but it’s generally faster to write with pens.

Flashlight, preferably one with an assault crown. You never know who or what you’ll encounter whilst investigating a crime scene at night, but more importantly, you could potentially miss a lot of clues without the correct lighting.

Pocket knife, preferably one with multiple blade sizes, and a screwdriver. Used for cutting open sealed things, disassembling things (laptops, clocks, etc) that may contain clues, stabbing people, and freeing the zip cuffed prisoners of the kidnapper who you just rendered unconscious with your assault crowned flashlight.

A friend, preferably a helpful and willing one. They are good for bouncing theories, double checking chains of thought, picking up observations you missed, and bringing a second opinion

A phone. Preferably more than one, in the event of your capture, there is a chance your enemy may not think to look for more than one phone. Have your most important contacts on speed dial.

Combat boots, for rough terrain.

Gloves, combat and latex. Used for collecting evidence, as well as rough terrain.

Ziploc (or other airtight bags). Used for storing evidence.

Depending on the situation, food is never a bad idea. Make sure it is appropriate for the journey, avoid foods that can spoil, as well as sugary foods that will cause a sugar crash later.

Let’s talk about the absolute basics in deduction. Seems like there’s a lot of people that misunderstand them, even other deductionists. This post is made to correct some of these misunderstandings.

What do we deductionists do? We gather information and make conclusions about that information. The premise is simple. Is it simple to get to the same level as Sherlock? No. Do I know of someone that is on the same level as Sherlock? No, and I know quite a few deductionists. But here’s the big reason why I don’t know of anyone at the same level as Sherlock, it’s not that Sherlock is fictional, it’s because of perfect situations that Sherlock is in. These happen, but not as often as Sherlock finds himself in them.

The way with OCC:

First of all, you should try and remember OCC. This the order in which you as a deductionist should operate.

Observation – Here you observe the place or person you are deducing. There are things to look for if you have the knowledge, some says you should observe everything, and sure, you should do that in a perfect world but you won’t be able to use everything you observe so that will only waste your time when you get into higher ranks of deduction. And if you want to know what to observe than all you need to do is practice.

Conclusion – The second step is to come to a conclusion from what you have observed. This is the deduction, we will talk more about this later on in this text. This will require both logic and knowledge. If you lack in one of these then you’ll need to train that.

Confirmation – Now this is something most deductionist don’t do because they are scared of failing. If you don’t confirm if you are right you’ll hinder your own progress extremely. If you can confirm, always try to.

The parts

Now, most break down deduction into two parts, logic and knowledge. I think that the knowledge part needs to be split into two parts. Absolute knowledge and statistical knowledge. This is important, I’ll try and explain why but first you need to know about the three kinds of deduction.

Deduction –

This reasoning is used when you have one or more statements that you combine to reach a logical conclusion.

The reasoning is that if the statements are true and clear the conclusion must be true.

An example of deductive reasoning:

Statements:

Pink is not a natural hair colour.

Emily has pink hair.

Conclusion:

Someone/something has dyed Emily’s hair pink.

This is deduction in which you use absolute knowledge to make a deduction. And if you truly use absolute knowledge then the conclusion will be correct.

Induction –

In inductive reasoning, you come to a conclusion that’s probable. The statements are viewed as strong evidence for your conclusion.

An example of inductive reasoning:

Statements:

There are marbles in this bag.

All 8 out of 10 marbles I have seen from this bag are black.

Conclusion:

All marbles from this bag are black.

This doesn’t tell you if the conclusion is true or not but thanks to the strong evidence of the statements you’re presented with, it’s probable that the conclusion is true. This is statistical knowledge and will be true most of the time.

Abduction –

In abductive reasoning, you have the statements and from that, you make an educated guess about what the conclusion might be. This reasoning is looking for the best explanation.

An example of abductive reasoning:

Statements:

The grass is wet.

The grass is usually dry.

Conclusion:

It has rained.

This is something we deductionists often do. We always look for the best explanation based on the evidence we are provided. This, if done correctly, will also most often be true. This will often be your own conducted statistical knowledge.

The reason why “knowledge” should be split into “absolute knowledge” and “statistical knowledge” is that if you have the logic you’ll never be wrong with absolute knowledge, but with statistical knowledge, you can still be wrong. Some tell you that logic is more important than knowledge and vice versa. This couldn’t be more wrong. Logic and knowledge are equally important. Those who don’t agree probably don’t know that much about the category they are dismissing. Logic and knowledge should work together alongside each other.

But if you want the “WOW effect” one of these triumphs over the other. If you do a deduction via logic people can see your train of thought quite easily, especially if you explain it. If you do deduction via knowledge then people won’t be able to follow your train of thought without that specific knowledge. And more people have a good logical mind than specific knowledge about everything. Something magicians have as a catchphrase nowadays are “People aren’t stupid” and that is true. If you, the reader of this thinks that most people are stupid then you need to come out of that bubble of yours.

Some other things.

So can you yourself measure how good you are at deduction? No, not really. You’ll always be biased towards yourself. So if you like yourself, you’ll probably think that you are better at deduction than you really are. If you think the worst of yourself then you’ll probably think you are worse than you really are. Then we have the “Dunning–Kruger effect”, most of you will probably, in the beginning, think that you are better at deduction than you really are, because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It predicts that beginners rate themselves to be better than they really are while experts rate themselves to be worse than they really are. So no you can’t measure your skill level yourself.

This point I’ll make now is kind of connected to the previous one. Don’t assume you are right. That would be really stupid. If you assume you are right, you’ll fall for confirmation bias. This is when you look for things that would prove what you believe to be true, and miss things that disprove your theory. One more reason this is bad, I know of deductionists that don’t want to accept that they’re wrong, even if it’s confirmed. They think the one that tells them they’re wrong are lying. Extremely bad.

The pattern.

Your knowledge about deduction will improve. In the beginning, before you start deduction you’ll probably not know about it at all, you’ll have an unconscious ignorance towards it. When you start reading about it, you’ll probably understand that you don’t know much about it. So you’ll have a conscious ignorance towards it. After trying it out and really learning you’ll start noticing that you can deduce some things, you’ll have and conscious knowledge towards deduction. When you’ve become an expert to master you’ll make deductions without thinking that much, you’ll have an unconscious knowledge about deduction.

Pattern:

Unconscious ignorance

Conscious ignorance

Conscious knowledge

Unconscious knowledge

So, how do you get better in deduction? Practice, it might sound cliché but it’s true. But however, you can shorten the time quite much, if you confirm your deductions. The second C in OCC is extremely important. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong then you can’t improve. You won’t get better just from reading this. So go out there and make deductions and most importantly confirm your deductions.

If you want me to write a post about confirming your deductions about people without the fear to fail (because if you fail they won’t know that you’ve failed) then write to me about that. A lot of people seem to be afraid of saying their deductions out loud.

Let’s talk about the absolute basics in deduction. Seems like there’s a lot of people that misunderstand them, even other deductionists. This post is made to correct some of these misunderstandings.

What do we deductionists do? We gather information and make conclusions about that information. The premise is simple. Is it simple to get to the same level as Sherlock? No. Do I know of someone that is on the same level as Sherlock? No, and I know quite a few deductionists. But here’s the big reason why I don’t know of anyone at the same level as Sherlock, it’s not that Sherlock is fictional, it’s because of perfect situations that Sherlock is in. These happen, but not as often as Sherlock finds himself in them.

The way with OCC:

First of all, you should try and remember OCC. This the order in which you as a deductionist should operate.

Observation – Here you observe the place or person you are deducing. There are things to look for if you have the knowledge, some says you should observe everything, and sure, you should do that in a perfect world but you won’t be able to use everything you observe so that will only waste your time when you get into higher ranks of deduction. And if you want to know what to observe than all you need to do is practice.

Conclusion – The second step is to come to a conclusion from what you have observed. This is the deduction, we will talk more about this later on in this text. This will require both logic and knowledge. If you lack in one of these then you’ll need to train that.

Confirmation – Now this is something most deductionist don’t do because they are scared of failing. If you don’t confirm if you are right you’ll hinder your own progress extremely. If you can confirm, always try to.

The parts

Now, most break down deduction into two parts, logic and knowledge. I think that the knowledge part needs to be split into two parts. Absolute knowledge and statistical knowledge. This is important, I’ll try and explain why but first you need to know about the three kinds of deduction.

Deduction –

This reasoning is used when you have one or more statements that you combine to reach a logical conclusion.

The reasoning is that if the statements are true and clear the conclusion must be true.

An example of deductive reasoning:

Statements:

Pink is not a natural hair colour.

Emily has pink hair.

Conclusion:

Someone/something has dyed Emily’s hair pink.

This is deduction in which you use absolute knowledge to make a deduction. And if you truly use absolute knowledge then the conclusion will be correct.

Induction –

In inductive reasoning, you come to a conclusion that’s probable. The statements are viewed as strong evidence for your conclusion.

An example of inductive reasoning:

Statements:

There are marbles in this bag.

All 8 out of 10 marbles I have seen from this bag are black.

Conclusion:

All marbles from this bag are black.

This doesn’t tell you if the conclusion is true or not but thanks to the strong evidence of the statements you’re presented with, it’s probable that the conclusion is true. This is statistical knowledge and will be true most of the time.

Abduction –

In abductive reasoning, you have the statements and from that, you make an educated guess about what the conclusion might be. This reasoning is looking for the best explanation.

An example of abductive reasoning:

Statements:

The grass is wet.

The grass is usually dry.

Conclusion:

It has rained.

This is something we deductionists often do. We always look for the best explanation based on the evidence we are provided. This, if done correctly, will also most often be true. This will often be your own conducted statistical knowledge.

The reason why “knowledge” should be split into “absolute knowledge” and “statistical knowledge” is that if you have the logic you’ll never be wrong with absolute knowledge, but with statistical knowledge, you can still be wrong. Some tell you that logic is more important than knowledge and vice versa. This couldn’t be more wrong. Logic and knowledge are equally important. Those who don’t agree probably don’t know that much about the category they are dismissing. Logic and knowledge should work together alongside each other.

But if you want the “WOW effect” one of these triumphs over the other. If you do a deduction via logic people can see your train of thought quite easily, especially if you explain it. If you do deduction via knowledge then people won’t be able to follow your train of thought without that specific knowledge. And more people have a good logical mind than specific knowledge about everything. Something magicians have as a catchphrase nowadays are “People aren’t stupid” and that is true. If you, the reader of this thinks that most people are stupid then you need to come out of that bubble of yours.

Some other things.

So can you yourself measure how good you are at deduction? No, not really. You’ll always be biased towards yourself. So if you like yourself, you’ll probably think that you are better at deduction than you really are. If you think the worst of yourself then you’ll probably think you are worse than you really are. Then we have the “Dunning–Kruger effect”, most of you will probably, in the beginning, think that you are better at deduction than you really are, because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It predicts that beginners rate themselves to be better than they really are while experts rate themselves to be worse than they really are. So no you can’t measure your skill level yourself.

This point I’ll make now is kind of connected to the previous one. Don’t assume you are right. That would be really stupid. If you assume you are right, you’ll fall for confirmation bias. This is when you look for things that would prove what you believe to be true, and miss things that disprove your theory. One more reason this is bad, I know of deductionists that don’t want to accept that they’re wrong, even if it’s confirmed. They think the one that tells them they’re wrong are lying. Extremely bad.

The pattern.

Your knowledge about deduction will improve. In the beginning, before you start deduction you’ll probably not know about it at all, you’ll have an unconscious ignorance towards it. When you start reading about it, you’ll probably understand that you don’t know much about it. So you’ll have a conscious ignorance towards it. After trying it out and really learning you’ll start noticing that you can deduce some things, you’ll have and conscious knowledge towards deduction. When you’ve become an expert to master you’ll make deductions without thinking that much, you’ll have an unconscious knowledge about deduction.

Pattern:

Unconscious ignorance

Conscious ignorance

Conscious knowledge

Unconscious knowledge

So, how do you get better in deduction? Practice, it might sound cliché but it’s true. But however, you can shorten the time quite much, if you confirm your deductions. The second C in OCC is extremely important. If you don’t know what you are doing wrong then you can’t improve. You won’t get better just from reading this. So go out there and make deductions and most importantly confirm your deductions.

If you want me to write a post about confirming your deductions about people without the fear to fail (because if you fail they won’t know that you’ve failed) then write to me about that. A lot of people seem to be afraid of saying their deductions out loud.