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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Is this a duck?

This is a duck. Viewed from a very weird perspective, but a duck nevertheless.


Availability bias is an interesting phenomenon in which perspective plays an important role. Availability bias occurs when we overestimate the probability of an event because we associate it with a memorable event. For example, death from cancer, intentional self-harm, and a fall is more likely than from a plane crash but because airplane incidents are more heavily covered in the media, people over-inflate their probability and modify their behavior accordingly [1]. As another example, if you know a relative who got food poisoning from eating a certain cuisine, you're more likely to stay away from those foods even though your chance of getting food poisoning remain the same.

Fun fact: Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman pioneered the study of availability bias. Kahneman eventually won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in the field of heuristics and biases.

[1] National Safety Council Injury and Death Statistics

3 comments:

  1. Interesting point of view!

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  2. The title is also kind of reminiscent of "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" -- this is not a pipe! :)

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    Replies
    1. Rene Magritte:
      http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=34438;type=101

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