Ecological Fallacy Podcast Prepared and Presented by Valarie Troya and Sean Swanepoel

What is Ecological Fallacy It is a statistical relationship observed at one level of aggregation that is assumed to hold because the same relationship holds at a more detailed level. Its when a conclusion is made about individuals based only on the analysis group data..

Ecological fallacy cont. Ecological fallacy is a very common in everyday discourse because it makes explanations simple. Stereotypes are one form of ecological fallacy. In statistical terminology the equivalent term used is biased sampling

Everyone is Different.

Some examples Relating high crime rates to places that have lower incomes or composed of higher minority groups. Relating a country with more fat in their diet that have higher cases breast cancer to women in that county more likely to get breast cancer. Relating higher levels of drug use in counties with higher income to the rich are more likely to be drug addicts. Relating areas of high cigarette smoking rates and rates of death by lung cancer to smoking causing lung cancer.

What can you do to eliminate Ecological Fallacy? Say what the data reveals – No assumptions of the causes. – Correlation does not equal causation. Be aware of biases and tendencies to stereotype individuals, therefore do not make conclusions based on the correlation alone. biased sampling is avoided by using methods such as stratified sampling.