Question

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.

The bagel data also reflect how much personal mood seems to affect honesty. Weather, for instance, is a major factor. Unseasonably pleasant weather inspires people to pay at a higher rate. Unseasonably cold weather, meanwhile, makes people cheat prolifically; so do heavy rain and wind. Worst are the holidays. The week of Christmas produces a 2 percent drop in payment rates—again, a 15 percent increase in theft, an effect on the same magnitude, in reverse, as that of 9/11. Thanksgiving is nearly as bad; the week of Valentine’s Day is also lousy, as is the week straddling April 15. There are, however, a few good holidays: the weeks that include the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Columbus Day. The difference in the two sets of holidays? The low-cheating holidays represent little more than an extra day off from work. The high-cheating holidays are fraught with miscellaneous anxieties and the high expectations of loved ones.

The excerpt is an example of inductive reasoning because the authors
work from a generalization to formulate specific examples.
arrive at a generalization after starting with another generalization.
formulate a generalization by studying specific examples.
arrive at specific examples by studying other examples.

Answer 1

formulate a generalization by studying specific examples.

They examine specific cases (bagel-payment rates under different weather and holidays) and infer a general rule about mood influencing honesty — which is inductive reasoning.