Abraham Lincoln

Looking For Links That Don’t Exist? – It’s The Texas Sharpshooter At Work

The Development Guy Looking For Links That Don't Exist - The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, Management , , , , , , , , , ,

As humans we are exceptionally good at forming links in our head when looking at seemingly random figures and events.

English: Broadside advertising reward for capt...
English: Broadside advertising reward for capture of Lincoln assassination conspirators, illustrated with photographic prints of John H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, and David E. Herold. Français : Avis de recherche avec prime de 100.000 $ pour la capture de John Wilkes Booth, le meurtrier du président Abraham Lincoln, et deux de ses complices, David Edgar Herold et John Harrison Surratt. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After all, if there is a pattern to be found, surely that can’t be pure coincidence.

Were your team’s sales figures down last week? Well the weather was terrible. Plus one of your best sales people was on holiday. Your competitor just released a new product line. And to top it all off, there’s a recession on. Money is tight. Everybody is tightening their belts.  It’s obvious to any reasonable person that all of the above explains last week’s poor sales.

Actually it doesn’t. A series of random and unrelated events do not equate to solid fact.

In his entertaining and thought provoking book: You Are Not So Smart, author David McRaney explains our ability to string random facts and events together.

In this book McRaney lists a series of coincidences involving John F Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln some of which are listed below:

Lincoln and Kennedy were both killed by an assassin with three names.  John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy was killed in the back seat of  a Lincoln, while Lincoln was killed in the Kennedy Theatre. Both were killed while  sitting next to their wife. Lincoln had a secretary called Kennedy. You guessed it,  Kennedy had a secretary called…. Lincoln.

There are even more coincidences revolving around Kennedy and Lincoln. Too many for it all to be a simple coincidence.  I’ve included a link to David McRaney’s website at the end of this post where you can read them all. When you look at all  of these coincidences together it’s obvious that there’s something else going on here.

But in reality there is no pattern. It really is just coincidence. All of it. As compelling as it is to believe there’s more to all of this there just isn’t.

By seeing a pattern in the above and assigning meaning to a series of a random events, we have fallen prey to The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.

The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy Explained

Imagine a cowboy in the wild west. Let’s call him Jeb. Now Jeb fancies himself as a real sharpshooter. It’s just a shame that he’s a bit short sighted and a terrible shot.

Next to his shack there stands a rickety old barn. Our hero loves nothing more than taking pot shots at the barn, always aiming for something, but never ever hitting it. Over the years the  barn becomes riddled with bullets.

One day in a fit of boredom Jeb paints a target around a number of bullet holes that happen to be clustered together. A short while later a stranger rides past on his trusty steed. He pauses and whispers under his breath “Oh boy. That fella sure is one helluva shot.”

The stranger has assigned meaning to a series of random events. Jeb’s target has given appearance of order where there is none.

That’s The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy at work.

There is danger in the Sharpshooter Fallacy. Over the years I’ve been to so many meetings where management teams have sought desperately to explain low sales. As a group they have clutched at a few straws, linked these all together, and then built a strategy around these tenuous links. Like Jeb they’ve painted a target on a barn.

Have you fallen victim to The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy yourself?

I know I have.

For more information I would highly recommend David McRaney’s blog at http://youarenotsosmart.com/

Related articles