WordNet
reasoning backward
n. the reasoning involved when you assume the conclusion is true and reason backward to the evidence [syn: regress]
Usage examples of "reasoning backward".
This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically.
Probably most of you are familiar from your mathematics classes in school with the idea that they teach you in trigonometry that all possible ellipses can be obtained by sectioning a cone and we can build up a picture of a cone by examining thousands and thousands of elliptical sections of that cone and then reasoning backward to the higher-dimensional object which that cone represents.