Scientific Definition
A trend appears in different groups but disappears or reverses when groups are combined.
Plain-English Definition
A trend appears in different groups but disappears or reverses when groups are combined.
Feynman Explanation
The aggregate can lie about the parts. The parts can lie about the aggregate.
Core Principle
A trend appears in different groups but disappears or reverses when groups are combined.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
A trend appears in different groups but disappears or reverses when groups are combined.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Aggregated metrics can hide important subgroup effects.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The aggregate can lie about the parts. The parts can lie about the aggregate.
Examples
- A treatment helps men and women separately but appears harmful overall.
- Aggregated metrics can hide important subgroup effects.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Analyze data at multiple levels of aggregation.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Analyze data at multiple levels of aggregation.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Ignoring general statistics in favor of specific, vivid information.
Posterior = (likelihood × prior) / evidence.
Update beliefs in proportion to the strength of new evidence.
Start with a prior; update with new evidence.
Novices experiencing early success, often due to variance and small samples.
High-impact, hard-to-predict, retrospectively explainable events.
Striking pattern that is statistically expected in large samples.
Reasoning in distributions — ranges and probabilities — rather than points.
Average outcomes across the population differ from outcomes across time for one person.
A rough calculation using order-of-magnitude reasoning.
In quantum mechanics, certain pairs of properties cannot both be precisely known.
We ignore sample size when judging probability.