What is Anchoring Bias? Anchoring Bias is a tricky part of our thinking process. It happens when the first bit of information we get sticks in our mind and influences how we think about things afterward. Imagine you’re trying to figure out how much something should cost or what decision to make, and the first number or opinion you hear sets the stage for your thinking, even if it’s not... »
Defining Ambiguity Effect The Ambiguity Effect is like choosing a familiar path in the woods over a new one, because the new path looks unknown and a bit scary. We feel safer on the path we’ve traveled before. This choice happens even when the new path could be better for us. Another simple definition is that it’s like always picking an old favorite book from your shelf instead of a ne... »
What is Zipf’s Paradox? Imagine you have a bag of jellybeans with lots of different flavors. Some flavors you find a lot, while others only appear once or twice. Zipf’s Paradox is kind of like that, but with words or things in a list. The idea is that the most common item is really common, but as you move down the list, each item gets less and less common, in a specific way. For exampl... »
What is a Zero-sum Game? A zero-sum game is when two or more people are involved in a situation, like a game or a contest, and for one person to win something, someone else has to lose the same exact thing. Think of it like a pizza—there are only so many slices, so if one person takes half the pizza, everyone else has to share the rest. This is just like saying the total amount of pizza stays the ... »
What is the Sorites Paradox? The Sorites Paradox gets its name from an ancient Greek word that means “heap,” like a pile of sand. Imagine you have one grain of sand. One grain isn’t a heap, right? If you add another grain, it’s still not a heap. Add one grain at a time, and for a long time, everyone agrees there’s no heap. But if you keep going, at some point, you hav... »
What is Skolem’s Paradox? Let’s simplify this paradox by offering two definitions that dig into what it means: Definition 1: Imagine a library with so many books that you could never count them all—this is what mathematicians call “uncountably infinite.” Now, Skolem’s Paradox tells us that even though this library is uncountably huge, you could somehow make a list of ... »
What is Simpson’s Paradox? Sometimes numbers can play tricks on us. They might tell us a story that seems to make sense, but when we look closer, we find out that story isn’t quite right. This is what Simpson’s Paradox is all about. It shows up when we have a bunch of information that we squeeze together into a summary and then, the summary doesn’t quite match what’s going on in ... »
What is the St. Petersburg Paradox? Let’s say you’re at a funfair and you come across a game where the cash prize can come as quite a surprise. Here’s how the game works: a coin is flipped again and again until it shows heads. If it shows heads on the first try, you win $2. Sounds simple? Well, if it’s tails first and then heads on your second try, your prize increases to $... »
What is Russell’s Paradox? Russell’s Paradox is a tricky problem that hits at the very heart of mathematics and logic. To grasp it, imagine you’re trying to put together a list of clubs. Some clubs are pretty straightforward, like the “chess club” where everyone likes to play chess. But what if you want to have a special “VIP club” that only includes clubs that aren&#... »
What is Richard’s Paradox? Richard’s Paradox is a brain teaser from the world of maths and logic. A paradox is like a puzzle that doesn’t have a clear answer, it’s like an unsolvable problem. This particular paradox shows us a conflict between numbers and language—two things you might not think would conflict. At its heart, Richard’s Paradox looks at descriptions of numbers... »