Learn English – What’s it called when someone forms a general conclusion from something which is aberrant

expressionsphrase-requests

I'm trying to think of a phrase that describes someone who is in a certain situation and when an outcome out of the norm comes up then he takes the aberrant outcome and generalizes it, believing it to be the normal outcome for that and similar situations. That is, he's forming an general opinion based on that one instance.

Is there an expression which describes that in one or two words? If so, what is it?

Best Answer

If I have understood the question correctly (I edited it to make it a bit more clearly about what I think you're asking for), then you are describing generalising from the particular or a hasty generalisation or maybe even jumping to a conclusion.

Wikipedia has

Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables. In statistics, it may involve basing broad conclusions regarding the statistics of a survey from a small sample group that fails to sufficiently represent an entire population. Its opposite fallacy is called slothful induction, or denying a reasonable conclusion of an inductive argument (e.g. "it was just a coincidence").

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