
6 • Big Data Analytics
In 1960, a cognitive scientist by the name of Peter Cathcart Wason pub-
lished a study in which participants were asked to hypothesize the pattern
underlying a series of numbers: 2, 4, and 6. ey then needed to test it by
asking if another series of numbers t the pattern. What is your hypoth-
esis and how would you test it? What Wason uncovered is a tendency to
seek conrmatory information. Participants tended to propose series that
already t the pattern of their assumptions, such as 8, 10, and 12. is is not
a helpful approach to the problem, though. A more productive approach
would be 12, 10, and 8 (descending order ...