Claim, Evidence and Reasoning as an Argument Structure

A claim is the sentence someone wants you to believe. Evidence is the number or observation sitting under it. Reasoning is the piece that explains why that number actually proves that sentence. Each layer depends on the one below it: the claim needs evidence to be more than an opinion, and the evidence needs reasoning to be more than a coincidence. If the reasoning is missing or wrong, the whole stack falls over, no matter how clean the data looks. A correct temperature reading or concentration value tells you nothing on its own; it only becomes support for a claim once you state the assumption that connects them.

Building one of these answers starts with pulling the claim apart from the data. Find the two numbers the claim is actually comparing, state the gap between them as the evidence, then ask what has to be true for that gap to mean what the claim says it means. That missing 'has to be true' sentence is the reasoning. When the evidence is indirect, like a sediment depth standing in for a date, the reasoning step has to supply the conversion rule itself, often a rate that is assumed constant, since nothing in the table hands you the date directly.

This structure is why the three reporting categories in this section collapse into one move. Reading a model, testing a claim against data, and judging a prototype's success all ask you to separate what is asserted, what was measured, and what links the two. Once you see that pattern, every question in this group is the same task wearing a different costume.