educe

Educe is a transitive verb meaning to draw out or bring forth, especially information, qualities, or conclusions, from evidence or data. It is used to describe the process of eliciting latent facts or arguments as well as the act of reasoning to a conclusion from given facts. In practice, you educe a pattern from a dataset, or you educe a conclusion from a set of observations.

The word comes from Latin educere, “to lead out.” It entered English in the 16th century. Educe is often contrasted with deduce and induce. Deduce means to arrive at a conclusion by reasoning from general principles or specific premises; induce means to persuade, or to cause, or to infer a general conclusion from specific instances. Educe focuses on bringing forth what is latent, whether a conclusion or a quality, from sources; deduce is the act of reasoning; induce is the act of causing or prompting a result or generalization.

Usage notes and examples: In formal or literary writing, "educe" can convey a careful extraction of information from data or testimony. It is somewhat formal and less common in everyday speech. Example sentences: "The audit report educed a number of irregularities." "From the interviews, the researcher educed a coherent theory."