Inference vs Observation

Once, I went home and upon entering my house, it smelled like vanilla. This smell is an observation and I inferred that someone had baked cookies. As it turns out, the smell was just a candle. Observations are things determined through the senses, how something looks or feels or smells or sounds. An inference then uses past knowledge to say something about that observation. An inference does not necessarily have to be correct, just a conclusion drawn from an observation. Observations are based in fact and describe how something is actually observed where as any processing of those observations are inferences.