Author: kristinjackvony

I often talk with testers who are feeling frustration with their manager. Some of their complaints include:• My manager doesn’t give me enough time to automate• My manager expects me to test all the sprint items at the last minute• My manager signs our team up for too much work• My manager doesn’t appreciate how […]

It’s a new year once again, and time to think about what improvements you and your team can make to increase the quality of your products! One complaint I often hear from testers is that they have become a bottleneck on their team. They feel constant pressure to get their testing done, and they feel […]

As you know, this blog has focused for the entire year on logical fallacies. We’ve learned about all kinds of fallacies, from the Red Herring Fallacy to the Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy! It’s time now for the last blog post of the year: the Slippery Slope Fallacy. The Slippery Slope Fallacy occurs when someone assumes […]

The Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy is an interesting one: it states that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false. This fallacy is often used by people who believe in entities like Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Loch Ness Monster: they will say that no one has proven that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, therefore […]

Equivocation is a technique used to mislead others through the use of imprecise language. There are many words in the English language that have more than one meaning, such as the word “light”, which could mean “bright”, or it could mean “not heavy”. It’s also possible to use equivocation by being deliberately ambiguous about time […]

You may have heard of the term “red herring” if you have ever read a mystery story. When a mystery author wants to keep their readers guessing about who the murderer is, they may throw in clues that point to another suspect. These clues are called red herrings. The Red Herring Fallacy is similar; rather […]

This month we continue our journey into logical fallacies with Circular Reasoning. Circular Reasoning can be explained in these two statements: • X is true because Y is true• Y is true because X is true A quick examination of these assertions shows that they aren’t proving anything. It’s possible that neither X nor Y […]

The Hasty Generalization Fallacy is a common one in software testing. But before we look at its impact on testing, let’s learn what it is. This fallacy occurs when someone draws a conclusion based on just one example, or a few examples. You may have fallen for the Hasty Generalization Fallacy as a child when […]

This month, I’m taking a look at the Bandwagon Fallacy. This fallacy happens when someone makes a choice because “everyone else is doing it”. When you were a child, you may have tried to convince your mother that you should be allowed to do something because all of your friends were allowed to do it. […]

In this installment of my Logical Fallacies series, I’m taking a look at the False Dichotomy fallacy. The False Dichotomy fallacy is used when someone presents two opposing options as if they are the only possibilities; that no middle way exists. This is detrimental to progress because it limits people’s thinking; they feel that they […]