Take a look at the person in this image.

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What do all of the items below have in common?

She is sitting down.

She is wearing glasses.

She is on a bicycle.

An OBSERVATION is...

information that is gathered through any of our senses.

Why not?

We can't see that a person is 30 years old, that she is happy, or that she exercises. We must decided these things.

How did we decide these things?

We looked at the picture. From the clues in the picture we decided or concluded that she is about 30 years old, she is happy, and she exercises based on our observations. We call these conclusions INFERENCES.

Inference: She is about 30 years old

• Observation Clue: She is an adult.

• Observation Clue: She isn't wearing stylish clothing of a younger adult.

• Observation Clue: She doesn't have wrinkles or grey hair like many older people.

An INFERENCE is...

a conclusion based on observation where no personal preference or sentiment is involved.

She exercises is a slightly better inference because

we have two observations (she is thin and she is on a bicycle) that support this inference and only one observation (she is smiling) that supports the inference that she is happy.

The way we assess inferences is...

to try to identify observations that support them. If observations consistently support the inference, we have confidence in it. If not, we don't.

Look at the following pieces of information:

• She's beautiful.

• Her hair is fixed in a nice way.

• Her fingernails are too long.

These pieces of information are different than Observations and Inferences.

They have personal preference in them. One person might think her hair is nice and another person might not think it is nice, or one person might think she is beautiful, and another person might not think so.

Both OPINIONS and INFERENCES are conclusions.

They can both be based on OBSERVATIONS. They are different because OPINIONS include personal preference and INFERENCES do not.

Let's practice what we learned.

I challenge you to think about things differently this week!