“IT’S elementary, my dear Watson.” So spoke Sherlock Holmes (at least in the movies) just before dazzling his faithful assistant with one of his famously nonelementary deductions. But in fact, Holmes performed not just deduction, which works from a hypothesis to a conclusion. His great skill was induction, which works in the opposite direction, from evidence to hypothesis. Another of his famous quotes suggests his modus operandi: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Having induced several hypotheses, Holmes eliminated them one by
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