49. You are biased when you don’t provide data

Have you ever looked at a set of data, saw two to three similar responses and quickly jump to a conclusion?

This is called the availability bias. The abrupt decision that we make based on immediate examples from our memory. We see one or two repetitions that evoke some emotion or confirms our premise and we think we saw a pattern.

But often, it didn’t occur to us to whether what we see or hear could be not statically significant. Or that we have pre-established a pre-conceived notion, got too excited to see some validation and use that small sample to confirm it. I know that it was very common trap I fell for when running my startup.

I’ve also been tracking how I spend time with an app. Instances like this happen all the time: I might think that I’ve been reading a lot because I happen to read pretty diligently for the last one or two days. But when I take into account my total reading hours for the week, my average daily hour seems scant.

So never trust our instinct. It’s prone to all kinds of biases which makes it the most unreliable source to make a decision from.

Instead of saying I’ve seen a lot of X or we’ve heard a lot of about Y, back it up with data. Say two out of one hundred said X. Ten percent confirms Y. By training our mind to think in this scientific manner, we will be more alert of our biases and avoid the unnecessary pain from working under false assumptions.