Duck test
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the use of "the duck test" within the Wikipedia community, see Wikipedia:DUCK.
The duck test is a humorous term for a form of inductive reasoning. This is its usual expression:
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject's habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.
History [edit]
Emil Mazey, the secretary-treasurer of the United Automobile Workers for 33 years, said at a labor meeting in 1946:
I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks—I’m certainly going to assume that he IS a duck.[1]
References [edit]
- ^ Sentinel, John (September 29, 1946). "Communist Expose The Case of the Duck". Milwaukee (WI) Sentinel.
- Christy, Howard Chandler; Ethel Franklin Betts (1982), The complete works of James Whitcomb Riley
- Denver, Joseph; Ethel Franklin Betts (1965), Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait
- Immerman, Richard H. (1982), The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press
