Anecdotal fallacy
Occurs when a vivid personal story, testimonial, or isolated case is treated as stronger evidence than broader, better, or more representative evidence.
EvidentialPerceptual
Foundational
Middle school+
Family
Statistical/Sampling Fallacy
The reasoning misuses rates, probabilities, samples, distributions, or other quantitative expectations.
Appeal to probability
Occurs when someone assumes that because something could happen, it is therefore likely or inevitable that it will happen.
Mathematical
Intermediate
High school
Base rate fallacy
Occurs when someone judges how likely a case is by focusing on vivid case-specific evidence while ignoring the underlying frequency of the thing in question.
Mathematical
Foundational
Middle school+
Conjunction fallacy
Occurs when a more detailed scenario is treated as more probable than a less detailed scenario that already contains it.
ConceptualMathematical
Advanced
Advanced undergraduate
Ecological fallacy
Occurs when statistics about a group are used to draw conclusions about particular individuals in that group.
MathematicalConceptual
Advanced
Advanced undergraduate
Gambler's fallacy
Occurs when someone thinks past outcomes of independent events make a future independent outcome more or less likely than it really is.
MathematicalCausal
Advanced
Advanced undergraduate
Hasty generalization
Occurs when someone draws a broad conclusion from too little evidence, too small a sample, or a badly skewed sample.
EvidentialMathematical
Foundational
Middle school+
Prosecutor's fallacy
Occurs when a low probability of a false match is confused with a low probability that a matched person is innocent.
Mathematical
Intermediate
High school
Regression fallacy
Occurs when movement back toward a normal range after an extreme result is credited to some intervention that may have had little or nothing to do with it.
CausalMathematical
Advanced
Advanced undergraduate
Sharpshooter fallacy
Occurs when someone highlights the data cluster that supports a favored story only after looking at the results, then treats that hand-picked pattern as if it had been th...
EvidentialConceptual
Intermediate
High school
Spotlight fallacy
Occurs when the most visible or most covered cases in a category are treated as if they represent the category as a whole.
Perspectival
Intermediate
High school
Survivorship bias
Occurs when conclusions are drawn from the visible successes that made it through a filter while the failures, dropouts, or non-survivors are ignored.
MathematicalEvidential
Intermediate
High school