PURPOSE: To make possible inference such as prediction concerning new data to take continuous values such as numerical values by automatically analyzing massive data and automatically extracting the character.

CONSTITUTION: This device is provided with a pattern extraction part 12 for extracting one pattern from stored data at least, pattern featurizing part 18 for featurizing the extracted pattern, data input part 22 for inference to input data as the target of inference, pattern recognition part 28 for recognizing which pattern extracted by the pattern extraction part 12 the input data belong to based on the pattern featurized by the pattern featurizing part 18, recognized result control part 30 for controlling consistency between the relevant recognized pattern and a pattern based on the data inputted by the data input part for reference, and output display part 26 for outputting the controlled result.