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Regression Fallacy
The regression (or regressive) fallacy is an informal fallacy. It assumes that something has returned to normal because of corrective actions taken while it was abnormal. This fails to account for natural fluctuations. It is frequently a special kind of the post hoc fallacy. Explanation Things like golf scores and chronic back pain fluctuate naturally and usually regress toward the mean. The logical flaw is to make predictions that expect exceptional results to continue as if they were average (see Representativeness heuristic). People are most likely to take action when variance is at its peak. Then after results become more normal they believe that their action was the cause of the change when in fact it was not causal. This use of the word "regression" was coined by Sir Francis Galton in a study from 1885 called "Regression Toward Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature". He showed that the height of children from very short or very tall parents would move toward the average. In fac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes fou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
''Post hoc ergo propter hoc'' (Latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') is an informal fallacy that states: "Since event Y ''followed'' event X, event Y must have been ''caused'' by event X." It is often shortened simply to ''post hoc fallacy''. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy '' cum hoc ergo propter hoc'' ('with this, therefore because of this'), in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a logical fallacy in which one event seems to be the cause of a later event because it occurred earlier. ''Post hoc'' is a particularly tempting error because correlation sometimes appears to suggest causality. The fallacy lies in a conclusion based ''solely'' on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors potentially responsible for the result that might rule out the connection. A simple example is "the rooster crows immediately befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regression Toward The Mean
In statistics, regression toward the mean (also called reversion to the mean, and reversion to mediocrity) is the fact that if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to its mean. Furthermore, when many random variables are sampled and the most extreme results are intentionally picked out, it refers to the fact that (in many cases) a second sampling of these picked-out variables will result in "less extreme" results, closer to the initial mean of all of the variables. Mathematically, the strength of this "regression" effect is dependent on whether or not all of the random variables are drawn from the same distribution, or if there are genuine differences in the underlying distributions for each random variable. In the first case, the "regression" effect is statistically likely to occur, but in the second case, it may occur less strongly or not at all. Regression toward the mean is thus a useful concept to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Representativeness Heuristic
The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty. It is one of a group of heuristics (simple rules governing judgment or decision-making) proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s as "the degree to which n event(i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated". Heuristics are described as "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to go – and quickly – but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." Heuristics are useful because they use effort-reduction and simplification in decision-making. When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not actually make it more likely. The representativeness heuristic is simply described as assessing similarity of obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton, FRS FRAI (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, Anthropology, anthropologist, tropical Exploration, explorer, geographer, Invention, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, Psychometrics, psychometrician and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics, and scientific racism. He was knighted in 1909. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and Statistical survey, surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometrics, anthropometric studies. He was a pioneer of eugenics, coining the term itself in 1883, and also coined the phrase "nat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx
The ''Sports Illustrated'' cover jinx is an urban legend that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the ''Sports Illustrated'' magazine will subsequently be jinxed (experience bad luck). Explanations A common explanation for the perceived effect is that athletes are generally featured on the cover after an exceptionally good performance, which might be an outlier compared to their usual level of performance. Therefore, their future performance is likely to display regression toward the mean and be less impressive by comparison. This decline in performance would then be misperceived as being related to, or even possibly caused by, the appearance on the magazine cover. Most athletes that seemed to suffer the jinx most typically suffered because of an injury to their body, or some other bad luck following their appearance. One prime candidate for this explanation is Eddie Mathews who suffered a broken hand while the team's nine game winning streak came to a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twice. It is also known for its annual swimsuit issue, which has been published since 1964, and has spawned other complementary media works and products. Owned until 2018 by Time Inc., it was sold to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) following the sale of Time Inc. to Meredith Corporation. The Arena Group (formerly theMaven, Inc.) was subsequently awarded a 10-year license to operate the ''Sports Illustrated''-branded editorial operations, while ABG licenses the brand for other non-editorial ventures and products. History Establishment There were two magazines named ''Sports Illustrated'' before the current magazine was launched on August 9, 1954. In 1936, Stuart Scheftel created ''Sports Illustrated'' with a target market of sportsmen. He publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jinx
A jinx (also jynx), in popular superstition and folklore, is a curse or the attribute of attracting bad or negative luck. The word ''"jynx"'' meaning the bird wryneck and sometimes a charm or spell has been in use in English since the seventeenth century. The modern spelling and connotations developed late in the nineteenth century. In the 21st-century press, the suggestion a ship might be "jinxed" was made in connection with two cruise liners after misfortunes, MS ''Queen Victoria'' and the '' Emerald Princess''. In the 20th century, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS ''Melbourne'' was sometimes said to be jinxed, having twice struck a friendly ship, with considerable loss of life. The term "jinx" also arises when one does not want to say something positive about an incomplete or inconclusive situation out of fear of "jinxing it". The superstition goes that speaking positively about one's current situation will cause it to be "jinxed", and things will start to go wrong. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Just-so Story
In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the listener of the essentially fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore genres like mythology (where they are known as ''etiological myths''see etiology). A less pejorative term is a pourquoi story, which has been used to describe usually more mythological or otherwise traditional examples of this genre, aimed at children. This phrase is a reference to Rudyard Kipling's 1902 ''Just So Stories'', containing fictional and deliberately fanciful tales for children, in which the stories pretend to explain animal characteristics, such as the origin of the spots on the leopard. It has been used to criticize evolutionary explanations of traits that have been proposed to be adaptations, particul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal Fallacies
The questionable cause—also known as causal fallacy, false cause, or ''non causa pro causa'' ("non-cause for cause" in Latin)—is a category of informal fallacies in which a cause is incorrectly identified. For example: "Every time I go to sleep, the sun goes down. Therefore, my going to sleep causes the sun to set." The two events may coincide, but have no causal connection. Fallacies of questionable cause include: * Circular cause and consequence * Correlation implies causation (''cum hoc, ergo propter hoc'') ** Third-cause fallacy ** Wrong direction * Fallacy of the single cause * ''Post hoc ergo propter hoc'' * Regression fallacy * Texas sharpshooter fallacy * Jumping to conclusions * Association fallacy * ''Reductio ad hitlerum'' * Magical thinking Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Exampl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Biases
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Although it may seem like such misperceptions would be aberrations, biases can help humans find commonalities and shortcuts to assist in the navigation of common situations in life. Some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, allowing cognitive biases enables faster decisions which can be desirable when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics. Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations, resulting f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Misuse Of Statistics
Statistics, when used in a misleading fashion, can trick the casual observer into believing something other than what the data shows. That is, a misuse of statistics occurs when a statistical argument asserts a falsehood. In some cases, the misuse may be accidental. In others, it is purposeful and for the gain of the perpetrator. When the statistical reason involved is false or misapplied, this constitutes a statistical fallacy. The false statistics trap can be quite damaging for the quest for knowledge. For example, in medical science, correcting a falsehood may take decades and cost lives. Misuses can be easy to fall into. Professional scientists, even mathematicians and professional statisticians, can be fooled by even some simple methods, even if they are careful to check everything. Scientists have been known to fool themselves with statistics due to lack of knowledge of probability theory and lack of standardization of their tests. Definition, limitations and context ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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