Gambler's fallacy. The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the mistaken belief that if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, then it will happen less frequently in the future; likewise, if something happens less frequently than normal during some period, then it will happen more frequently in the future (presumably as a means of balancing nature).
In situations where what is being observed is truly random (i.e. independent trials of a random process), this belief, though appealing to the human mind, is false. This fallacy can arise in many practical situations although it is most strongly associated with gambling where such mistakes are common among players. The use of the term Monte Carlo fallacy originates from the most famous example of this phenomenon, which occurred in a Monte Carlo Casino in 1913.[1][2] An example: coin-tossing[edit] Explaining why the probability is 1/2 for a fair coin[edit] Caveats[edit] Availability heuristic. The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind.
The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important. Subsequently, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinion biased toward that latest news. [1] Further, the availability of consequences associated with an action is positively related to perceptions of the magnitude of the consequences of that action. In other words, the easier it is to recall the consequences of something, the greater we perceive these consequences to be. Finally, people not only consider what they recall in making a judgment but also use the ease or difficulty with which that content comes to mind as an additional source of information. The following are three heuristic principles that people rely on in situations of uncertainty.
Overview and history[edit] Research[edit] Texas sharpshooter fallacy. The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed.
From this reasoning a false conclusion is inferred.[1] This fallacy is the philosophical/rhetorical application of the multiple comparisons problem (in statistics) and apophenia (in cognitive psychology). It is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns where none actually exist. Structure[edit] The Texas sharpshooter fallacy often arises when a person has a large amount of data at their disposal, but only focuses on a small subset of that data. Some factor other than the one attributed may give all the elements in that subset some kind of common property (or pair of common properties, when arguing for correlation).
Examples[edit] A Swedish study in 1992 tried to determine whether or not power lines caused some kind of poor health effects. See also[edit] Related fallacies[edit] Apophenia. Apophenia /æpɵˈfiːniə/ is the experience of perceiving patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad[1] by Peter Brugger,[2] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general, such as with gambling and paranormal phenomena.[3] Meanings and forms[edit] In 2008, Michael Shermer coined the word "patternicity", defining it as "the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise".[6][7] In The Believing Brain (2011), Shermer says that we have "the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency", which Shermer calls "agenticity".[8] Statistics[edit] Pareidolia[edit] Pareidolia is a type of apophenia involving the perception of images or sounds in random stimuli, for example, hearing a ringing phone while taking a shower.