Base rate fallacy

Uncommon card · No. 107508

The base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is a type of fallacy in which people tend to ignore the base rate (e.g., general prevalence) in favor of the information pertaining only to a specific case. Base rate neglect is a specific form of the more general extension neglect. It is also called the prosecutor's fallacy or defense attorney's fallacy when applied to the results of statistical tests (such as DNA tests) in the context of law proceedings. These terms were introduced by William C. Thompson and Edward Schumann in 1987, although it has been argued that their definition of the prosecutor's fallacy extends to many additional invalid imputations of guilt or liability that are not analyzable as errors in base rates or Bayes's theorem.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Marc Rumilly Vectorization: Mrmw, CC BY 4.0