Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my blog!
My name is Sherlie Moriarty, and I am an amateur deductionist.
You may have heard of deductive reasoning in relation to Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, or basically detectives in general.  In essence, deductive reasoning has to do with analyzing peoples' body language, mannerisms, appearance, words, and possessions to come to rational conclusions.  It is also called "deduction" for short.

Notice that I say rational.  A deduction is never valid without solid evidence.  It's not based on personal biases, assumptions, or stereotypes.

For example, if I looked at a cat walking with its owner and "deduced" that it must be a YouTube star because there are a lot of feline YouTube stars, that would not be valid.  Just because cats are often seen on YouTube, or stereotypically seen on YouTube, doesn't mean that every cat has its own channel and millions of devoted fans.

However, if there were people lined up outside a building to see a cat, and said cat was going to be  playing piano, then I could safely assume that the cat had reached fame somehow, possibly through YouTube or another Internet video site, maybe television.  That, or it was locally famous from a county talent show.  Part of deduction is keeping your mind open to different possibilities.

I hope this clears up what deduction is in general, and most of my posts will be about specific techniques.  I am still learning a lot, and if you have anything to share, add, or correct I encourage you to comment!