Anecdotal fallacy

What it is

Uses a personal story or isolated example in place of systematic evidence. Anecdotes are vivid, but they cannot show how common or typical something is.

Related

• Availability heuristic bias
  Memorable personal stories are easily recalled, so they outweigh statistics.
• Hasty generalization fallacy
  An anecdote is the smallest possible sample, so anecdotal reasoning is a hasty generalization in story form.
• Salience bias bias
  Vivid stories stand out; dull data doesn't, so stories dominate judgment.

References

• Wikipedia: Anecdotal fallacy en.wikipedia.org
• Your Logical Fallacy Is: Anecdotal yourlogicalfallacyis.com
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies iep.utm.edu
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies plato.stanford.edu
• Wikipedia: List of fallacies en.wikipedia.org
• Purdue OWL: Logical fallacies owl.purdue.edu

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