The use of statistical heuristics in everyday reasoning

Abstract

In reasoning about everyday problems, people use statistical heuristics, that is, judgmental tools that are rough intuitive equivalents of statistical principles.Statistical heuristics have improved historically and they improve ontogenetically.Use of statistical heuristics is more likely when (a) the sample space and the sampling process are clear, (b) the role of chance in producing events is clear, or (c) the culture specifies statistical reasoning as normative for the events.Perhaps because statistical procedures are part of people's intuitive equipment to begin with, training in statistics has a marked impact on reasoning.Training increases both the likelihood that people will take a statistical approach to a given problem and the quality of the statistical solutions.These empirical findings have important normative implications.