Availability Bias

A Trick Question You Might Want To Try With Your Friends

Let me ask you a question. Among English 6-letter words, which of the following is more probable?

• Find a word whose fifth letter is ‘n’.
• Find a word ending with ‘ing’.

The correct one is the former. But if your answer is the latter, don't worry about it. It is normal. To see why, let me ask you another question.

What is the 5th letter in a 6-letter word with suffix `ing'? It's `n', isn't it?. The latter case is just a special case (i.e., subset) of the former, and is therefore less probable.

Mathematics and Implication


In Mathematics, suppose we have events A and B. Then,

P(A and B) <= P(A)
P(A and B) <= P(B)

However, most people are highly influenced by relevant information. They tend to think that statements with greater relevant details are more probably. This is a common fallacy which happens extensively in our daily life.


More Examples

Let me ask you again. Which of the following is more porbably?

(i) "A suspect hates the victim and he kills the victim.'' OR ``A suspect kills the victim.''
(ii) It will be cloudy and rain tomorrow.'' OR ``It will rain today.''

A lot of people tends to choose the former, since it provides supporting reasons. But think about it. More details impose more restriction on the statement. And, more restriction means less probable. This is a common fallacy in our daily life. Remember, more details leads to less probability, not more probability.

Source: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow, Chapter 1 [Read the Book Review] [ Read the Previous Part ] [Read the Next Part].

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Book or Audiobooks?

Personally, I prefer audiobooks. It's fun, and I can listen when I'm doing something else. It also makes other activities (e.g., jogging) a lot more fun. For more detail about audiobooks, please read [this post].

There is one more reason that may encourage you to go for the audiobook version. You can get it now for FREE. Audible offers you a free trial for 14 days. Even if you get the book and cancel the subscription right away (so that you don't have to pay), you can keep the book. And, don't worry if you lost the audiobook file. Just log into audible.com. You can keep downloading the over and over again.


About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.