The law of small numbers is not really a law. It is a sarcastic name describing the misguided attempt to… — Leonard Mlodinow

The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that passed mathematical tests for randomness nor recognize reliably whether a given string was randomly generated.

It is one of those contradictions of life that although measurement always carries uncertainty, the uncertainty in measurement is rarely discussed.

Even random differences in pay lead to the backward inference of differences in skill and hence to the development of unequal influence. It's an element of personal and office dynamics that can't be ignored.