INFERENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does inference mean? 

• INFERENCE (noun)
  The noun INFERENCE has 1 sense:

1. the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation

  Familiarity information: INFERENCE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INFERENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

illation; inference

Hypernyms ("inference" is a kind of...):

abstract thought; logical thinking; reasoning (thinking that is coherent and logical)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inference"):

analogy (an inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others)

corollary ((logic) an inference that follows directly from the proof of another proposition)

derivation (a line of reasoning that shows how a conclusion follows logically from accepted propositions)

deduction; entailment; implication (something that is inferred (deduced or entailed or implied))

extrapolation (an inference about the future (or about some hypothetical situation) based on known facts and observations)

presumption ((law) an inference of the truth of a fact from other facts proved or admitted or judicially noticed)

Derivation:

infer (reason by deduction; establish by deduction)

infer (conclude by reasoning; in logic)

infer (draw from specific cases for more general cases)

inferential (derived or capable of being derived by inference)

inferential (resembling or dependent on or arrived at by inference)

inferential (relating to or having the nature of illation or inference)

 Context examples 

“I am afraid, Holmes, that you are not very practical with your deductions and your inferences. You have made two blunders in as many minutes. This dress does implicate Miss Flora Millar.”

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Any deviation of results or inferences from the truth, or processes leading to such deviation.

(Bias, NCI Thesaurus)

“Yes,” said Holmes; “I think that both inferences are permissible. Was there any other spirit but rum in the room?”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

These things are we told, and in this record of ours we have proof by inference.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In statistical inference procedures (hypothesis tests and confidence intervals), parametric procedures are those that incorporate assumptions about population parameters.

(Parametric Test, NCI Thesaurus)

In other words, the color people were seeing could not be attributed to the light hitting the eye, but to unconscious inferences about the proper color of faces.

(Rosy health and sickly green: color associations play robust role in reading faces, National Institutes of Health)

In statistical inference procedures (hypothesis tests and confidence intervals), nonparametric procedures are those that are relatively free of assumptions about population parameters.

(Non-Parametric Test, NCI Thesaurus)

If Lady Bertram, with all her incompetency and languor, could feel this, the inference of what her niece, alive and enlightened as she was, must feel, was elevating.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A statistical technique which helps in making inference whether three or more samples might come from populations having the same mean; specifically, whether the differences among the samples might be caused by chance variation.

(Analysis of Variance, NCI Thesaurus)