Category

Statistical Biases

Misunderstanding numbers, probabilities, and statistics

Biases that affect our understanding and interpretation of statistics, probabilities, and numerical data.


Biases in this Category

9

Neglect of Probability

2 min read

Neglect of probability is the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

/ Probability blindness

Ludic Fallacy

2 min read

The ludic fallacy is the misuse of games to model real-life situations.

/ Gaming fallacy

Sampling Bias

2 min read

Sampling bias is a bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others.

/ Ascertainment bias

Selection Bias

2 min read

Selection bias is the bias introduced by the selection of individuals, groups or data for analysis in such a way that proper randomization is not achieved.

/ Sampling bias (related)

Survivorship Bias

2 min read

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility.

/ Survival bias

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

2 min read

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.

/ Clustering illusion (related)

Pareidolia

2 min read

Pareidolia is a specific form of apophenia involving the perception of images or sounds in random stimuli, such as seeing faces in clouds.

/ Face pareidolia

Apophenia

2 min read

Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.

/ Patternicity

Clustering Illusion

2 min read

The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable 'streaks' or 'clusters' arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random.

/ Hot hand fallacy (related)