Belief in the law of small numbers.

Abstract

Reports that people have erroneous intuitions about the laws of chance. In particular, they regard a sample randomly drawn from a population as highly representative, I.e., similar to the population in all essential characteristics. The prevalence of the belief and its unfortunate consequences for psychological research are illustrated by the responses of 84 professional psychologists to a questionnaire concerning research decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) Language: en