A field guide to the ways reasoning breaks
Causal errors
Also called Monte Carlo fallacy
Believing that independent events correct themselves, so a run makes the opposite due.
Red came up five times, so black is due.
Ask whether the process has any memory. If each trial is independent, the odds do not move.
Also called the Monte Carlo fallacy, after a night in 1913 when a roulette wheel there landed on black 26 times in a row and gamblers lost heavily betting that red was 'due'. The name survives because it is the cleanest known instance of expecting randomness to keep accounts.
I've applied to ten jobs and heard nothing, so the eleventh application is bound to land.
She's had three boys in a row, so this one is almost certainly a girl.
The coin came up heads seven times; I'm putting everything on tails.
Our startup's last four product launches flopped, so by the law of averages the next one has to be a hit.