PEDIATRICS Vol. 94 No. 4 October 1994, pp. 432
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BELIEF IN THE "LAW OF SMALL NUMBERS"

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Misconceptions of chance are not limited to naive subjects. A study of the statistical intuitions of experienced research psychologists revealed a lingering belief in what might be called the "law of small numbers," according to which even small samples are highly representative of the populations from which they are drawn. The responses of these investigators reflected the expectation that a valid hypothesis about a population will be represented by a statistically significant result in a sample—with little regard for its size. As a consequence the researchers put too much faith in the results of small samples and grossly overestimated the replicability of such results. In the actual conduct of research, this bias leads to the selection of samples of inadequate size and to overinterpretation of findings.