Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability.

Why this matters here

Tversky and Kahneman’s availability heuristic shows that people judge frequency and probability by what comes easily to mind, which systematically diverges from base rates. What We Cannot See extends that cognitive finding into institutional memory after dramatic events: the vivid week crowds out logged near misses, so memory answers “what comes to mind?” while statistics would ask a different question.