A few months ago I posted on the subject of Galton’s Fallacy. In recent years this term has come into use among academic economists to designate a certain fallacy about growth rates. It is named after Francis Galton because Galton (allegedly) was one of the first to commit it. My post examined what was meant by the term and whether or not Galton was guilty of the fallacy. I also looked more generally at fallacies associated with regression to the mean. I found there was a lot of confusion about what Galton’s Fallacy was, but whatever fallacies Galton may have committed, Galton’s Fallacy was not among them!

I know that people often come to GNXP via search engines, so occasionally I do a search for topics I have posted on, to see if they are catching the attention of the searchers. Usually I find they do quite well - for example, my recent post on kin selection came up as result no. 10 on that subject. I dare say this is more due to the number of links to GNXP than to any enthusiasm for my own meanderings, but whatever the reason, it is nice.

I am immodest enough to think that my piece on Galton’s Fallacy is one of my better efforts, and potentially useful to others, so I was disappointed to find that it didn’t show up in search results on the most popular search engine, even though another post of mine which merely mentioned Galton’s fallacy in passing did show up. So I wonder if some quirk of wording or layout was responsible.

The purpose of the present post is therefore:

a) another attempt at catching the attention of people interested in Galton’s Fallacy, and

b) an experiment to see if a shorter post, with frequent references to Galton and Galton’s Fallacy, does better at tickling the fancy of the search engine.

For those who want to know more about Galton’s Fallacy, or Galton, or fallacies in general, my original post on Galton’s Fallacy is here!