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PHI 2100 Exam 2 Review Sheet Exam 1 is on Wednesday April 3rd The purpose of the review sheet is to illustrate what is expected of you on the exam The questions on the exam will not be exactly the same as those in this review However if you can do all of the problems in the review you should be able to do very well on the exam Gilovich What is the Cluster Illusion Give an example of someone being affected by it The clustering illusion refers to the tendency to erroneously perceive small samples from random distributions to have significant streaks or clusters caused by a human tendency to underpredict the amount of variability likely to appear in a small sample of random or semi random data due to chance The clustering illusion is central to the hot hand fallacy They found that the idea that basketball players shoot successfully in streaks sometimes called by sportcasters as having a hot hand was false In the data they collected if anything the success of a previous throw very slightly predicted a subsequent miss rather than another success What is the Law of Large Numbers What is the problem with accepting a fictional law of small numbers The law of large numbers is that smaller samples will tend to be more extreme than large samples The result of performing the same experiment a large number of times should be close to the expected value and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed The law of small numbers is not a real law it s the fallacious view that patterns that show up in large samples should show up in much smaller samples Define Regression to the Mean Regression to the mean is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement and paradoxically if it is extreme on its second measurement it will tend to have been closer to the average on its first Some authors have claimed that the alleged Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx is a good example of a regression effect extremely good performances are likely to be followed by less extreme ones and athletes are chosen to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated only after extreme performances Assuming athletic careers are partly based on random factors attributing this to a jinx rather than regression as some athletes reportedly believed What is the Regression Fallacy Things like golf scores the earth s temperature and chronic back pain fluctuate naturally and usually regress towards 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 What is Representative Bias Give an example of how someone might be affected by it The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty When people rely on representativeness to make judgments they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not make it more likely This heuristic is used because it is an easy computation The problem is that people overestimate its ability to accurately predict the likelihood of an event A person reading the NY times in the bus is a graduate student Wrong It is more likely that it is a undergraduate because more undergraduate students ride the bus What are ad hoc explanations Give an example of an ad hoc explanation When someone s attempt to explain an event is effectively disputed or undermined and so the speaker reaches for some way to salvage what he can The result is an explanation which is not very coherent does not really explain anything at all and which has no testable consequences even though to someone already inclined to believe it it certainly looks valid Example I was healed from cancer by God Really Does that mean that God will heal all others with cancer Well God works in mysterious ways Why is it a problem to focus on confirmation and ignore disconfirmation Focusing on confirmation makes it seem that you have more reason to believe a conclusion that you really do Focusing on partial evidence makes some conclusion seem more likely than it really is similar to hasty generalization Why does the following argument seem valid though it isn t i All roses are flowers ii Some flowers fade quickly iii Therefore some roses fade quickly Because we are focusing on confirmation and give us more reason to believe the conclusion we see more than what there really is We don t look to falsify it cause it makes sense so we go along with it What is the problem of absent or hidden data Often we ignore the evidence that is available to us since we are only looking for confirmation Sometimes though the evidence is not available but still relevant this data is particularly easy to ignore as even if you look for it you won t find anything definite Example people used to think that for a fact that people of various ethnicities were not intelligent As evidence they would cite the absence of these people from positions at universities or published journals etc What is the obvious problem with this Absent data Provide an example of how absent or hidden data can lead to bad reasoning particularly in light of our tendency to seek and emphasize confirmation while neglecting disconfirmation Does the fact that no woman has been president of the U S evidence that no women would make a good president What is the problem with of checking a prediction when it has multiple endpoints When predictions have multiple endpoints that is when the precise date time conditions of success or failure and so on are not precisely identified we have a tendency to use those that will satisfy our expectations Two sided events are those we remember regardless of whether they confirm what we think or disconfirm it They are memorable just for happening What are two sided events What are one sided events One sided events are those we remember only if they confirm our expectations One sided events lead to problems in reasoning and sometimes in behaviors Why do one sided events sometimes lead to bad reasoning According to Gilovich why do people tend to continue to perform certain social behaviors even though evidence indicates these behaviors do not help them achieve their goals Gilovich argues that we do perform


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FSU PHI 2100 - Exam 2

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