Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition) (Dr. Bo's Critical Thinking Series)

by Bo Bennett

Ecological Fallacy (also known as: ecological inference fallacy) Description: The interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong. Logical Form: Group X has characteristic Y. Person 1 is in group X. Therefore, person 1 has characteristic Y. Example #1: Men score better on math than women do. Jerry is a man. Therefore, Jerry is better at math than Sylvia, who is a woman. Explanation: The fact that men score better on math than women is a group generalization. This does not mean that any individual man will score better than any individual woman on math. Educated guesses could be made if we knew more about the statistics. For example, if we just knew that men scored an average of 8% higher than women, we could not even say that any given man is likely to be better at math than any given woman. This is because there could be what is referred to as an uneven distribution, that is, there could be a small group of women who are really bad at math or a small group of men who are really good at math that throws off the curve.