Where to Look - Keys

Some of the most telling aspects of our appearance are the elements which are common from day to day. A perfect example of one of these elements are our keys. They tell us about our daily routines, our possessions, our level of organization, and the things we don't want to be without.

For the key ring in the above example, we can make the following deductions (which I will break down below). The subject most likely:

• has two primary modes of transportation, a Hyundai car or SUV (pretty sure Hyundai doesn't make non-commercial trucks - an exact model could be determined by visiting a local hardware store and comparing the picture against the key blanks for Hyundai cars) and a bicycle.
• is fairly computer savvy.
• lives in a gated community or apartment complex.
• lost a dog (dead, missing)
• stores his/her keys in multiple ways or regularly removes keys from the key-ring

We should all be fairly aware of how to identify car keys at a glance at this point, but just in case, here's a tip - it's the big one. From there, it's a simple matter of recognizing the insignia (which will normally appear on both sides of the key) and going from there. Next, house keys will usually (not always, especially if it is a custom key) have the triangular holes in them like the key in the top left corner of the picture. That leaves two keys (one standard, one weird), a dog-tag, and a flash-drive. The flash-drive is easy - if the subject didn't use it / know how to use it, it wouldn't be in such an easily accessible location. The weird key is for a bike lock (P.S. It would serve you well to know how to identify bike lock keys - I may create a post to this effect at a later date). The dog tag appears to be for a dog named "Sherlock" (great name), and it not being ON the dog would seem to signify that he (probably a he) no longer has need of it.

Now for the tricky one. We arrive at the final key - a standard silver 5-pin key with "ACE" (name of a hardware store) on it. This would seem to signify that the key was is a copy and was manufactured with a key machine at an ACE hardware. If the key was for a padlock, it would have the brand name of the padlock on it (ex: "Master"), so it can't be that. It can't be a mail key due to the fact that the post-office maintains and distributes the keys to lockable mail-boxes (and therefore would not use ACE to make copies). What does this leave? We know it's a copy, so a logical next question is, "Who has the original?"

• A roommate (flatmate) perhaps? But we already have a house key.
• A friend/relative - perhaps the subject has been given a spare for surprise visits/emergencies. While possible, the subject would need to visit quite often for that to be the case. In order for such a key to be included on the key-ring, it would have to be more important than a mail key, which is not present on the key-ring. Result - such a key would probably be on a separate (secondary) key-ring with the mail key.
• A landlord/property manager? But what key would a landlord need OTHER THAN a house key that a tenant would need as well?

It is also possible that an extra key may mean multiple different locks on a subject's place of residence. For example, one key may be for the deadbolt, the other for the door handle itself. If that were the case here, why would a single subject have the original of one and a copy of the other?

I submit that the key is for EITHER the main gate to the complex in which the subject lives (if one exists) OR a key to a communal area, such as a shared laundry room.

If anyone has any more questions about keys/key-rings (in general or specifically), or would like to provide some information, or feel I may have missed something, feel free to leave a comment (Blogger), send me a private message (Tumblr), or drop me an email: everydaydeductionist@gmail.com (either).

Happy Sleuthing!

New Schedule

Sorry friends, the start of the semester has been crazy. In addition to a few other life changes, I will be instituting a new schedule on the blog. Unless otherwise noted, I'll be posting once every two weeks minimum (should be more often). I have also been reading your suggestions and comments which I will be incorporating into these new posts. I'll be posting more "What to Look for," and I will be putting any references I find useful on the blog as well.

I also will continue to encourage viewer-submitted pictures of desks, rooms, etc. Those can be submitted here, or you can attach it to an email to everydaydeductionist@gmail.com. Quick note about submissions - while I think your computer screens are fascinating, they are not the type of thing that I'm going to select. Your computer is configured according to very specific preferences you have. This means that any judgments made according to observations of your computer (particularly a screenshot of the desktop) will be based entirely on things which are completely within your control. In a perfect world, there are no scuffs, dings, scratches, or blood spatter. It is precisely because we live in a perfect world that the art/science of making deductions is possible and useful.

With that in mind, happy sleuthing!

Reader Challenge!

Seeing as I haven't posted one of these in a while, I'd like to give some viewers a chance to make some deductions without offering any assistance or ideas of my own. In order to do that, I've posted a (slightly embarrassing) picture of myself for you all to practice on.

Challenge: Tell me as much as you can about what is going on in this picture. Use any and all tricks and techniques at your disposal.

If we don't get enough responses, I may ask a few leading questions to keep it going.

Happy deducing!

P.S. If you happened to be there at the time this picture was taken (obviously someone was), then please either refrain from commenting, OR be extra careful to support what might be considered unfairly obtained information.

Deduction #8

My interests have been piqued, and I'm excited to present a new deduction for you all.

First, a few more obvious things:

• College student, age consistent with what appears to be my primary demographic
• Lives in North America (light sockets are wonderful things)
• Dorm resident (I have eyes)

Statistically speaking, our student is a freshman (dorm resident), but I think this hypothesis is supported by their general lack of "stuff," as well as the presence of brand-new 120 page notebooks.

Using time-stamps on the picture and the submission website, I can be reasonably certain that our subject resides in the Eastern Time Zone. So far, the area that appears most likely (but only slightly) is near Virginia, as the company whose name appears on the purple and white item on the desk has their headquarters there.

It appears our subject is also interested in Sociology or is at least enrolled in a class on the subject. It's hard to Google the name "Ritzer," without finding the associated books, one of which is "Essentials of Sociology," which this one appears to be. Based on the complexity of the material, I'd say the book is consistent with our freshman theory.

Let's talk about the chargers in the power strip. There's an apple charger there, which I believe is likely to belong to someone other than the subject of the picture, as the picture itself was taken with an Android Phone (metadata) and the laptop appears to be a windows machine.

Okay, time for the desk. Right-handed, tea-not-coffee, weirdness with the green lightbulb in the desk lamp. Subject went out for breakfast prior to taking the picture (breakfast sandwhich?). Right-handed based on mouse and fork. I am interested in the choice of the large mouse-pad, which suggests our subject utilizes the computer for a task for which precise mouse-movement is useful (Photoshop, online gaming, etc.). Key ring has three keys on it, one of which is for the dorm-room door. Of the remaining two, one looks fairly mailboxey, and the other might very well be to an externally facing door, although it's a little unclear. Also, is that a bottle-opener on the other end of that keychain? Finally, I should mention that I'm incredibly flattered by this particular deduction photo, as our subject appears to be perusing my blog whilst taking the picture.

A few more miscellaneous notes - the computer's shape makes me think gaming PC, as does the cord which appears to facilitate a headset that has an attached microphone. Our subject is fairly neat. The bed is made, the shoes are lined up, and the books/notebooks are stacked. That, plus the blanket on the bed and Christmas lights shifts the balance of probability slightly in the female direction, but then we have the gaming PC, the minimalist key-chain, the shoe size compared to national average (barring any scaling mistakes I made), and the type of shoe shifting it slightly in the male direction. I confess to not being comfortable making a for-sure gender distinction, as the evidence here has more to do with how our subject prefers their room than their gender.

This brings up an interesting point about this science. Utilizing averages to determine probabilistically who a subject is (gender-wise or otherwise) will work ON AVERAGE. But simply knowing that the average male foot is slightly larger will not tell you who a person is, or even that they are male if all you are going on is their shoe-size. It will only tell you where someone lies on a bell-curve, once we decide which bell curve we are on. So be very careful with these types of conclusions. The solution (almost always) is get more data. After all, we cannot make bricks without clay.

I'm very interested to see others' opinions on this one, and I can't wait for someone to point out something I may have missed. Happy sleuthing!

A Word About Abduction

Abductive reasoning is something that you may not have heard of, but rest assured, of the modes of thought responsible for Sherlock Holmes' brilliance, it is the most important. It combines rigid logical connections of deduction with the fluidity of induction.

Simply put, abductive reasoning is what Holmes uses to do his thing.

Holmes is famous for the line, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth." Strictly speaking, this is true. When one has a set of n possible options, eliminating (n-1) of these options will result in one option remaining. What this phrase fails to take into account is how one actually generates this list of n possible options.

The fact is, you CAN'T just make up a list of all of the possible options. Any list of possibilities you can come up with will be incomplete. You can always add things like, "OR, aliens could have abducted him, probed him, then staged his murder to make it LOOK like he was poisoned." There's NO WAY that's what happened, but speaking deductively, you also can't 100% rule it out. That's where abductive reasoning comes in.

It allows you to gauge possibility in a slightly less rigid way, while still keeping most of the logical progressions we love about deduction. This mode of thought is what allows Sherlock Holmes to generate his list of possible explanations for how the crime may have occurred, after which point he can apply his rigorous logic and his brilliant detective skills to narrow the possibilities down to a single solitary solution.

How does one apply this reasoning to one's own {cases, life, questions} you ask? Two things above all else benefit a detective in this endeavor - a formidable memory and an abundance of imagination.

Sherlock Holmes manages to generate possible scenarios so quickly partly due to his vast knowledge of crimes already committed. As he is so fond of saying, "There is nothing new under the sun." Thus, he is able to extrapolate possible means, motives, and even weapons - from crimes of a similar nature which have already happened. When he is not able to find a suitable comparison, his mind searches for new and unexpected ways in which events could have transpired. An excellent way to inspire such strokes of investigatory brilliance is to ask one's self, "What if it didn't happen that way?" or "How could this have been possible given X and Y?" or even "If I were the killer...?"

Long story short, the abductive way to find the answer is to create a set of possible options, one of which HAS to be the answer, and keep eliminating things until one reaches a solution. It's certainly not glamorous, but damn if it isn't Holmes.

Deduction #7

Another College Student!

This one was fun. Right off the bat, we have a female subject. Evidently she is quite the bookworm based on the stack of Young Adult novels on the right side of the desk. Next we have her name, Annie, which is written on several of the pieces of paper on the bulletin board running the length of the desk. We could talk about her affinity for horses, or the fact that she seems to be a Vikings fan, or the operating system of her computer (Windows 7 I think), but I think I've found something more interesting. A closer inspection of the lanyards hanging just behind the lamp reveal the logo of UST, a Catholic College in St. Paul, Minnesota. That by itself is not a ton to go on. However, once we add the brand-new student ID (still in sleeve) and what appears to be a welcome packet on the desk, I feel quite safe in assuming that you are an incoming Freshman at the school.

Now that we know a little about the who, let's talk about where. Given previous information, we should answer the question of whether this picture was taken in a dorm room. I'm confident it was not. The layout of the room (lamp reflection) suggest single-occupant bedroom. Not only that, but this picture was sent to me about a month ago, a full 10 days before you could have moved in. Based on a few quick statistics from UST's website, I conclude that you most likely are staying in a dorm the first year.

Now for the fun part. The picture was taken with an Apple Device (Ipad) which, as we know from previous deductions, has a nasty habit of encoding GPS data into its pictures. Without going into too much detail, I was able to get a pretty good lock on your location at the time the picture was taken. This type of information would allow someone to, oh I don't know, find the Facebook page for the incoming freshman class of UST, search for the name "Annie," and narrow the search by hometown. Upon doing that, one would discover that you ARE in fact staying in a dorm (the exact one will not be mentioned), and that you were at one point engaged in the process of searching for a flatmate in true Sherlockian fashion. If the cup in your room (reflection in picture frame) is any indication, you must be quite happy about the number and proximity of Arby's at your new location in the dorms.

Happy sleuthing!

10,000

We did it! Ladies an gentlemen, the blogger version of my blog (the original, pre-Tumblr version) has reached over 10,000 views! This is a huge milestone for me, and it has renewed my motivation to continue the experiment and help others improve their deduction/induction/memory skills.

Thanks to everyone who has commented, submitted pictures for practice, and suggested ideas for posts, and practiced along with me! Keep it up!