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 :
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