Ecological fallacy

What it is

Draws conclusions about individuals from statistics about the group they belong to.

Related

• Fallacy of composition fallacy
  The ecological fallacy is a close relative of division: it reads group-level facts as true of individuals.
• Fallacy of division fallacy
  Both infer about members from the group; the ecological fallacy does it with statistics.
• The problem with averages bias
  The ecological fallacy and the problem with averages are both about taking a group-level figure as true of every member.

References

• Wikipedia: Ecological fallacy en.wikipedia.org
• 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

More in “Cause, statistics and evidence”