ABSTRACT
Children build rules to understand the world around them. They do this through a process called inference – coming to a conclusion through a process of reasoning. Imagine a child trying to understand what type of animal a chicken is: only birds have feathers, a chicken has feathers, and therefore a chicken is a bird. This is an example of deductive reasoning. Evidence is information which can be used in supporting a specific pattern. Evidence depends heavily on context. For example, if police investigating a bank robbery find the same amount of money hidden in a suspect's house that was stolen, then that information will be used as evidence against the suspect — as the information supports the police's hypothesis. It is important to recognise that evidence from a well designed experiment with strong inference is better than a larger amount of evidence from studies with weak inference. The quality of evidence always matters more than the quantity of evidence.
