ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how several theoretical accounts1 explain why people sometimes have problems processing statistical information. It also examines how these explanations suggest that training can help people to overcome these difficulties. The foci of the four explanations to be dealt with are quite
different. The pragmatic-implications explanation examines the implications of linguistic and social context for judgment under uncertainty. The heuristicsand-biases explanation focuses on demonstrating people’s proneness to make reasoning errors with an abundance of examples, some of which we saw in chapter 1. The ab-stract-rules explanation2 is mainly concerned with the role that intuitive versions of abstract rules (which were called models in chapter 1) play in statistical reasoning, and how such rules can be used in training. Finally, the adaptive-algorithms explanation has mainly been used to specify conditions under which people should show sound judgment.
