Deductive Reasoning

The words go like this:

Cats like to play with Yarn,
Amy is a cat,
Therefore Amy like to play with yarn

Deductive Reasoning is using logic and known facts to reach a conclusion.

Didactic

Didactic: Designed or intended to teach; intended to convey instruction and information.

"Purification of the sample, if we only had a few proteins, directly we had selected HPLC for the separation, but, a choice for a mixture is 2D gel electrophoresis. 2D gels, differences that are characteristics of the individual starting states recognized by comparison of two protein pattern." (This is from a science website discussing gel electrophoresis.)

Rose Tantranon-Sato

Antithesis

Antithesis: establishes a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure. Human beings are inveterate systematizers and categorizers, so the mind has a natural love for antithesis, which creates a definite and systematic relationship between ideas.

E.g. Every man who proposes to grow eminent by learning should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recompense of labor, and that labor, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward. --Samuel Johnson

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the process of making inferences based on observations of patterns/repetitions, or generalizing from detailed facts.

Squares, rectangles, parallelograms, kites, and trapezoids each have many characteristics, but the only ones they have in common are the number of sides and the total degrees. Through inductive reasoning, we can deduce that these are characteristics common to all quadrilaterals.

Alina

ANALOGY

ANALOGY: Compares two things, which are alike in several respects, for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one.

The teacher nourishes the seed of knowledge in his students so it may grow, as the sapling of a mighty tree is cared for in it's youth.

PATRICK

Analogy

Definition: An analogy compares two things for the purpose of explaining or clarifying some unfamiliar or difficult idea or object by showing how the idea or object is similar to some familiar one. While simile and analogy often overlap, the simile is generally a more artistic likening, done briefly for effect and emphasis, while analogy serves the more practical end of explaining a thought process or a line of reasoning or the abstract in terms of the concrete, and may therefore be more extended.

Example:

Knowledge always desires increase: it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

- Samuel Johnson

Or this example of a Web Browser and a Server "uniting" to create a web page, their "offspring."

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia: is the use of words whose pronunciation imitates the sound the word describes.

Example: "SPLAT"