Abductive Reasoning

An example of Abductive Reasoning is a young lady walks into her room and finds her dolls all over the place. If her dog has been alone in the room all day, she may reasonably concludes that the dog created the mess. In reality, her cousin might have visited with a little child who did all that. But the dog theory was the most likely conclusion!

In the context of SDD, Abductive reasoning is useful for discussing and testing hypotheses about the possible influence of one observation on another. Abductive reasoning is for example used by doctors who make a diagnosis based on test results they have available, or by jurors when they make decisions based on the evidence they have in front of them.