To follow up a little:
You should learn solve problems by knowing general rules or knowing how to lookup general rules. Then applying rules to specific observations to make sense of the observations.
There are two very important concepts in learning and applying Science: Inductive reasoning, Deductive reasoning.
What you did is best explained as deductive. You had a problem, you looked up a general statement that can be used to solve your problem, then, finally you researched specific properties of each compound so you could order them by some arbitrary property into a list.
Inductive reasoning can be more hazardous - you take some observables and try to make a general hypothesis and then test it against your information. If your group of observables comes from a non-representative population, is very small, or is otherwise limited AND you do not know any of this, then the hypothesis you create has likely got problems. We humans do this kind of reasoning instinctively. Because in the distant past if we saw a tiger attack an animal or a group member you would immediately thereafter avoid tigers. You did not have to witness another attack and risk being tiger chow. Since we all got past the tiger chow stage, this kind of reason is how we work day to day. A "bum-like" man walks up and pulls a knife, you run away. Thereafter you avoid people that appear to you to be the same as the guy who pulled a knife. One incident and you develop a general rule: avoid bum-like people. Use some other characteristic than "bum-like"" if that does not work for you.
As an aside: there is a really unfortunate aspect to this - people get all kinds of bizarre ideas from observing something and not having a good way to know if what they saw was representative. But. They don't care! Our tiger-chow avoidance program (inductive reasoning) kicks in. They are convinced that they know. Advertisers and politicians exploit this reasoning tendency mercilessly.