My reticence to admit the truth had never stopped any of my classmates from making assumptions, from grabbing me by the neck, from miming obscene gestures in the hallway.
However, those who seek to study patterns objectively must overcome several quirks of human psychology, including tendencies to identify patterns where there are none, to make assumptions regarding cause from the observation of a pattern alone, to extrapolate from individual cases to entire systems, and to focus on extremes rather than recognizing diversity.
"We make assumptions that people from other cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds aren't kinky, non-monogamous or queer," says psychotherapist Ronete Cohen.
When you don't have a clear list of metrics and their definitions, people make assumptions — ones that may differ from colleagues.
Recent research by McFadden, Renfrew and Atkin [ 34] and Puthussery et al. [ 35] in the UK, indicates that maternity services often lack cultural sensitivity and health professionals have a tendency to make assumptions about, or stereotype, women from ethnic minorities.
Thus, we have to make assumptions that cannot be evaluated from the observed data and the problem with non-coverage for extrapolations are not necessarily reduced by improvements in the model.
However, in observational studies where everybody is invited or recommended to undergo mammography screening, we have to make assumptions on risk of death from breast cancer among the uninvited women.
Contemporary data practice also frees campaigns from having to make assumptions about voters in the first place.
