Talk:Process of elimination

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This entire wiki page is all wrong. Process of Elimination is not only for taking tests. It's also for differential diagnosis in medicine, taxonomy etc... It's used for many many many different things and not just multiple choice questions on tests. This page needs to be re-written. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.233.52.194 (talk) 23:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

Agreed 2601:143:C780:F80:895D:D5B4:CAF2:E531 (talk) 00:32, 27 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Process of Elimination isn't an IT only gig.

On a multiple-choice test, for example, one does the opposite of the definition posted here: They rule out the bad bits to reveal the good. [is running late for work... but theres so much work to do here!]

I came up with :

In a selection of As and Bs, if agents of hidden property B are known to be finite, agents with an evident property A can be ruled out sufficiently to deduce which agents have hidden property B.

But this qualifies more or less as "original research". Ieopo 18:31, 28 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

The answer to the test question is not elegant. If you cannot divide a number by 2, then you can't divide it by 4 either since 4 = 2 * 2. The same goes with 3 and 15.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.7.89.51 (talk) 17:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'll start by mentioning other applications than exam testing. Mikael Häggström (talk) 12:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to work the following quote into the article but not sure how. Any ideas how to put it in? RJFJR (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It's simply elementary, my dear reader. Happy Birthday to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born 22 May, 1859.

Of Course! Now included with link to The Sign of Four, page 109, where Sherlock Holmes utters the fateful phrase. — Rgdboer (talk) 22:50, 24 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

The following reference was removed:

• Richard L. Burden, J. Douglas Faires (2000). Numerical Analysis, 7th ed. Brooks/Cole. ISBN 0-534-38216-9.

The book is on numerical analysis with no process of elimination material in its pages. The contributor may express a reason to include it. Perhaps the idea is that a data set may have some models, most of which are inappropriate, but that deserves explanation. Rgdboer (talk) 23:19, 24 August 2026 (UTC)Reply