Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning

My Math class brought up a subject that I had no background in. I was very hard pressed to find an explanation of inductive and deductive reasoning for dummies 🙂
I did some research on the Internet and still could not find something simple. So after much adieu…

Inductive Vs. Deductive Reasoning Explained.

Deductive: Think of a detective. He deduces (reduces). He sees the big picture — a crime was committed. He then takes the evidence and deducts the parts that don’t fit until he comes up with the core of the matter. Deductive deducts the false. Elementary my dear Watson…

Inductive takes small pieces of information in and puts them together into a big picture.

Inductive study takes various individual pieces of evidence and looks for patterns (For instance, individual Bible verses) and cements them together into the big picture — a cohesive whole — perhaps into a theological proposition.