Psychological Terms, Physics Laws & Effect, Mathematics & Paradoxes, Fallacies, Metaheuristics(Growing List)

Psychology

• Analysis Paralysis
• It is the state of over-analyzing (or over-thinking) a situation so that a decision or action is never taken, in effect paralysing the outcome. A decision can be treated as over-complicated, with too many detailed options, so that a choice is never made, rather than try something and change if a major problem arises. A person might be seeking the optimal or "perfect" solution upfront, and fear making any decision which could lead to erroneous results, while on the way to a better solution.
• Antifragility
• A property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures.
• Barnum effect
• Also called the Forer effect, or less commonly, the Barnum-Forer effect, is a common psychological phenomenon whereby individuals give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them, that are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. Similar to Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
• Broken windows theory
• A criminological theory that states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behaviour, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.
• Cobra effect
• Attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse, as a type of unintended consequence.
• Cognitive Dissonance
• It is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values
• Collective Consciousness
• It is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society.
• Confirmation bias
• The tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one's existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information.
• Country-of-origin effect (COE)
• Also known as the made-in image and the nationality bias, is a psychological effect describing how consumers' attitudes, perceptions and purchasing decisions are influenced by products' country of origin labelling.
• Decay theory
• Memory fades due to the mere passage of time.
• Decision fatigue
• The deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.
• Dilbert principle
• A satirical concept of management developed by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, which states that companies tend to promote incompetent employees to management to minimize their ability to harm productivity.
• Dunning–Kruger effect
• A cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.
• Endowment Effect
• An emotional bias that causes individuals to value an owned object higher, often irrationally, than its market value.
• Falkland's Law
• 'When there is no need to make a decision, Don't make a decision. ' Save that brain space for something more important.
• False consensus effect
• Consensus bias, is a pervasive cognitive bias that causes people to “see their own behavioral choices and judgments as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances".
• Gambler's fallacy
• Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the incorrect belief that, if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past, it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa).
• Gilbert's law
• The biggest problem at work is that none tells you what to do.
• Group Polarisation
• It refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious. The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion.
• Halo effect
• The tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas.
• Herd Mentality
• It describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors. Examples of the herd mentality include stock market trends, superstition and home décor. Social psychologists study the related topics of group intelligence, crowd wisdom, and decentralized decision making.
• Hick's law
• Increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically
• Ideomotor phenomenon (Florida effect)
• A psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously.
• Illusory truth effect
• The tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure.
• Jidelim law
• When you list things out on paper, you're halfway done.
• Lindy effect
• The future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy.
• Loss aversion
• People's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it is better to not lose $5 than to find $5.
• Mandela effect
• A large group of people remember something differently than how it occurred. Conspiracy theorists believe this is proof of an alternate universe, while many doctors use it as an illustration of how imperfect memory can be sometimes.
• Mental accounting
• The different values a person places on the same amount of money, based on subjective criteria, often with detrimental results.
• Murphy's Law
• It is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
• Othello Error
• It occurs when a suspicious observer discounts cues of truthfulness. Essentially the Othello error occurs, Paul Ekman states, "when the lie catcher fails to consider that a truthful person who is under stress may appear to be lying" their non-verbal signals expressing their worry at the possibility of being disbelieved. A lie-detector or polygraph may be deceived in the same way, by misinterpreting nervous signals from a truthful person.
• Overview effect
• A cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus"
• Pareidolia
• It is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, the man in the moon, the moon rabbit, and hidden messages within recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds.
• Preconceived notion
• An opinion formed beforehand without adequate evidence.
• Recency bias
• A cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones.
• Ringelmann effect
• The tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases.
• Sawyer effect
• Practices that can either turn play into work or work into play.
• The Great Wallenda Effect
• Being a winner is not what you do but what you are. By being, you will become. A loser will dwell on failure. a winner will visualize attainment. By internalising success, you develop a winning mindset. With a winning mindset, you will act and react with a winning reflex. A winner knows that having a victim’s mentality is self-defeating behavior. it will portend rejection or victimization. The self-assured person expects to succeed —- and does.
• Time discounting
• The current relative valuation placed on receiving a good at an earlier date compared with receiving it at a later date.
• Walson's law
• If you keep putting information and intelligence first at all the time, money keeps coming in.

Physics

• 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
• States that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. The total entropy of a system and its surroundings can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is in thermodynamic equilibrium, or is undergoing a (fictive) reversible process.
• Doppler effect
• The change in frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the wave source
• Dzhanibekov effect
• A result in standard mechanics which describes the movement of a rigid object with the help of three distinctive key moments of inertia.
• Gutenberg–Richter law
• The relationship between the magnitude and total number of earthquakes in any given region and time period of at least that magnitude.
• Kessler effect
• The density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions.
• Leidenfrost effect
• A physical phenomenon in which a liquid, close to a surface that is significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer that keeps the liquid from boiling rapidly.
• Magnus effect
• The force exerted on a rapidly spinning cylinder or sphere moving through air or another fluid in a direction at an angle to the axis of spin. This force is responsible for the swerving of balls when hit or thrown with spin.
• Maxwell’s Equation
• A set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, and electric circuits.
• Navier-Stokes Equation
• In fluid mechanics, a partial differential equation that describes the flow of incompressible fluids. The equation is a generalisation of the equation devised by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century to describe the flow of incompressible and frictionless fluids.
• Rehbinder effect
• The reduction in the hardness and ductility of a material, particularly metals, by a surfactant film. A proposed explanation for this effect is the disruption of surface oxide films, and the reduction of surface energy by surfactants.
• Relativity
• The notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. We here on Earth obey the same laws of light and gravity as someone in a far off corner of the universe.
• Venturi effect
• The reduction in fluid pressure that results when a moving fluid speeds up as it flows through a constricted section (or choke) of a pipe.

Mathematics

• Black Scholes Equation
• A partial differential equation (PDE) governing the price evolution of a European call or European put under the Black–Scholes model. Broadly speaking, the term may refer to a similar PDE that can be derived for a variety of options, or more generally, derivatives.
• Chaos Theory
• A branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
• Collatz Conjecture
• Start with any positive integer n. Then each term is obtained from the previous term as follows: if the previous term is even, the next term is one half the previous term. If the previous term is odd, the next term is 3 times the previous term plus 1. The conjecture is that no matter what value of n, the sequence will always reach 1.
• de Bruijn sequence
• Given an integer n and a set of characters A of size k, find a string S such that every possible string on A of length n appears exactly once as a substring in S.
• Derivatives
• To show rate of change: that is, the amount by which a function is changing at one given point.
• Euler’s Formula
• For any real number x: where e is the base of the natural logarithm, i is the imaginary unit, and cos and sin are the trigonometric functions cosine and sine respectively, with the argument x given in radians.
• Extrapolation
• A type of estimation, beyond the original observation range, of the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable
• Fibonacci Number
• Form a sequence, called the Fibonacci sequence, such that each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting from 0 and 1.
• Fourier Transform
• Decomposes a function of time into its constituent frequencies. This is similar to the way a musical chord can be expressed in terms of the volumes and frequencies of its constituent notes.
• Golden Ratio
• Two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.
• Imaginary Numbers
• An imaginary number is a complex number that can be written as a real number multiplied by the imaginary unit i, which is defined by its property i² = −1. The square of an imaginary number bi is −b². For example, 5i is an imaginary number, and its square is −25. Zero is considered to be both real and imaginary.
• Information Theory
• Studies the quantification, storage, and communication of information.
• Interpolation
• A type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points.
• Law of Gravity
• Every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
• Labouchère system
• Decides before playing how much money they want to win, and writes down a list of positive numbers that sum to the predetermined amount.
• Logarithms
• The inverse function to exponentiation. That means the logarithm of a given number x is the exponent to which another fixed number, the base b, must be raised, to produce that number x. In the simplest case, the logarithm counts the number of occurrences of the same factor in repeated multiplication; e.g., since 1000 = 10 × 10 × 10 = 103, the "logarithm to base 10" of 1000 is 3.
• Normal Distribution
• In probability theory, the normal distribution is a very common continuous probability distribution. Normal distributions are important in statistics and are often used in the natural and social sciences to represent real-valued random variables whose distributions are not known.
• Power law
• A functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another.
• Pythagorean Theorem
• A fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.
• Regression 
• A statistical method used in finance, investing, and other disciplines that attempts to determine the strength and character of the relationship between one dependent variable (usually denoted by Y) and a series of other variables.
• Schrodinger’s Equation
• A linear partial differential equation that describes the wave function or state function of a quantum-mechanical system. It is a key result in quantum mechanics, and its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of the subject.
• Wave Equation
• An important second-order linear partial differential equation for the description of waves—as they occur in classical physics—such as mechanical waves or light waves. It arises in fields like acoustics, electromagnetics, and fluid dynamics.

Paradoxes

• Abilene paradox
• A group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many (or all) of the individuals in the group. It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the group's and, therefore, does not raise objections. A common phrase relating to the Abilene Paradox is a desire not to "rock the boat." This differs from groupthink in that the Abilene paradox is characterised by an inability to manage agreement.
• Abundance paradox
• The average quality of information is decreasing over time.
• Allais paradox
• A choice problem designed by Maurice Allais (1953) to show an inconsistency of actual observed choices with the predictions of expected utility theory.
• Approval paradox
• The more you want someone's approval, the harder it is to get it.
• Attention paradox
• Not paying attention to something is paying attention.
• Business dad paradox
• Technology improves our efficient and save us more time but to do more work.
• Change paradox
• We want others to change, but we are unwilling to change ourselves.
• Choice paradox
• The more choices you have, the less happy you are with your final choice.
• Easterlin paradox 
• At a point in time happiness varies directly with income, both among and within nations, but over time the long-term growth rates of happiness and income are not significantly related.
• Efficient market paradox
• The price of all stocks trading in the stock market is already priced in, so you don't need to actively research about the stock because every good news or bad news that could possibly be there is already reflecting in the stock.
• Friendship paradox
• An individual's friends have more friends than that individual.
• Happiness paradox
• The more you search for happiness, the more it eludes you.
• Hegel paradox
• We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
• Helping paradox
• We are more likely to help those who don't need than those who really need.
• Icarus paradox
• The term refers to the phenomenon of businesses failing abruptly after a period of apparent success, where this failure is brought about by the very elements that led to their initial success. It alludes to Icarus of Greek mythology, who drowned after flying too close to the Sun. The failure of the very wings that allowed him to escape imprisonment and soar through the skies was what ultimately led to his demise, hence the paradox.
  
• Knowing paradox
• The more you admit you don't know, the more you will know.
• Knowledge paradox 
• The more you know, the less you can clearly explain.
• Man in car paradox
• When we signal that we are wealthy and that people should like and admire us, what really happens is people ignore the person in possession of the object of envy and just focus on the possession.
• Progress paradox
• The more society moves forward, the more problems are created.
• Scarcity paradox
• The more available something is, the less we want it.
• Service recovery paradox
• is the phenomenon in which a customer feels better about a company after they've solved a problem with the service or product, than if there had been no problem at all.
• The two-string problem
• An analysis of the contribution of experience in problem solving. In the two string problem subjects are shown two strings hanging from the ceiling and are instructed to tie the strings together. The strings are placed apart so that subjects are unable to grasp both strings simultaneously. The solution involves the use of items which are available in the vicinity of the strings. For example, a hammer can be used as a weight to make one string swing. The research comprised three separate experiments. The objective was to investigate environmental contributions, as opposed to invoking concepts such as "insight", to account for problem solving behaviors.
• Unanimity paradox
• Too much agreement imples a systematic error in judgement.
• Vulnerability paradox
• We believe showing our whole selves will scare others away, when in reality it draws them closer.

Fallacies

• The Straw Man Fallacy
• This fallacy occurs when your opponent over-simplifies or misrepresents your argument (i.e., setting up a "straw man") to make it easier to attack or refute. Instead of fully addressing your actual argument, speakers relying on this fallacy present a superficially similar — but ultimately not equal — version of your real stance, helping them create the illusion of easily defeating you.
• The Bandwagon Fallacy
• Just because a significant population of people believe a proposition is true, doesn't automatically make it true. Popularity alone is not enough to validate an argument, though it's often used as a standalone justification of validity. Arguments in this style don't take into account whether or not the population validating the argument is actually qualified to do so, or if contrary evidence exists.
• The Appeal to Authority Fallacy
• While appeals to authority are by no means always fallacious, they can quickly become dangerous when you rely too heavily on the opinion of a single person — especially if that person is attempting to validate something outside of their expertise.
• The False Dilemma Fallacy
• This common fallacy misleads by presenting complex issues in terms of two inherently opposed sides. Instead of acknowledging that most (if not all) issues can be thought of on a spectrum of possibilities and stances, the false dilemma fallacy asserts that there are only two mutually exclusive outcomes.
• The Hasty Generalization Fallacy
• This fallacy occurs when someone draws expansive conclusions based on inadequate or insufficient evidence. In other words, they jump to conclusions about the validity of a proposition with some — but not enough — evidence to back it up, and overlook potential counterarguments.
• The Slothful Induction Fallacy
• Slothful induction is the exact inverse of the hasty generalization fallacy above. This fallacy occurs when sufficient logical evidence strongly indicates a particular conclusion is true, but someone fails to acknowledge it, instead attributing the outcome to coincidence or something unrelated entirely.
• The Correlation/Causation Fallacy
• If two things appear to be correlated, this doesn't necessarily indicate that one of those things irrefutably caused the other thing. This might seem like an obvious fallacy to spot, but it can be challenging to catch in practice — particularly when you really want to find a correlation between two points of data to prove your point.
• The Anecdotal Evidence Fallacy
• In place of logical evidence, this fallacy substitutes examples from someone's personal experience. Arguments that rely heavily on anecdotal evidence tend to overlook the fact that one (possibly isolated) example can't stand alone as definitive proof of a greater premise.
• The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
• This fallacy gets its colorful name from an anecdote about a Texan who fires his gun at a barn wall, and then proceeds to paint a target around the closest cluster of bullet holes. He then points at the bullet-riddled target as evidence of his expert marksmanship.
• The Middle Ground Fallacy
• This fallacy assumes that a compromise between two extreme conflicting points is always true. Arguments of this style ignore the possibility that one or both of the extremes could be completely true or false — rendering any form of compromise between the two invalid as well.
• The Burden of Proof Fallacy
• If a person claims that X is true, it is their responsibility to provide evidence in support of that assertion. It is invalid to claim that X is true until someone else can prove that X is not true. Similarly, it is also invalid to claim that X is true because it's impossible to prove that X is false.
• The Personal Incredulity Fallacy
• If you have difficulty understanding how or why something is true, that doesn't automatically mean the thing in question is false. A personal or collective lack of understanding isn't enough to render a claim invalid.
• The "No True Scotsman" Fallacy
• Often used to protect assertions that rely on universal generalizations (like "all Marketers love pie") this fallacy inaccurately deflects counterexamples to a claim by changing the positioning or conditions of the original claim to exclude the counterexample.
• The Ad Hominem Fallacy
• An ad hominem fallacy occurs when you attack someone personally rather than using logic to refute their argument. Instead they’ll attack physical appearance, personal traits, or other irrelevant characteristics to criticize the other’s point of view. These attacks can also be leveled at institutions or groups.
• The Tu Quoque Fallacy
• The tu quoque fallacy (Latin for "you also") is an invalid attempt to discredit an opponent by answering criticism with criticism — but never actually presenting a counterargument to the original disputed claim.
• The Fallacy Fallacy
• Here's something vital to keep in mind when sniffing out fallacies: just because someone's argument relies on a fallacy doesn't necessarily mean that their claim is inherently untrue.

Metaheuristics

• Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
• Inspired by the foraging behavior of ants, ACO uses pheromone trails and heuristic information to guide the search for optimal paths or solutions.
• Artificial Bee Colony (ABC)
• ABC mimics the foraging behavior of honeybees and their communication through waggle dances to find optimal solutions.
• Bee Algorithm (BA)
• BA imitates the foraging behavior of honeybees, where employed bees explore and exploit solutions, and scout bees search for new areas of the search space.
• Cuckoo Search (CS)
• Based on the brood parasitic behavior of cuckoo birds, CS imitates the laying and discovery of eggs to search for optimal solutions.
• Cultural Algorithm (CA)
• CA combines a population-based approach with a knowledge sharing mechanism. It incorporates a belief space that represents cultural knowledge and guides the evolution of solutions.
• Differential Evolution (DE)
• DE utilizes the differential operator to combine and mutate candidate solutions, promoting exploration and exploitation of the search space.
• Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA)
• EDA utilizes probabilistic models to estimate the distribution of promising solutions in a population. It uses these models to generate new candidate solutions for further optimization.
• Firefly Algorithm (FA)
• Inspired by the flashing behavior of fireflies, FA uses the attractiveness of fireflies to guide the search for optimal solutions.
• Genetic Algorithm (GA)
• Inspired by the process of natural evolution, GA uses the concepts of selection, crossover, and mutation to search for optimal solutions.
• Genetic Programming (GP)
• GP applies the principles of natural selection and genetic operations to evolve programs or mathematical expressions to solve problems.
• Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA)
• Inspired by the law of gravity, GSA simulates the interaction of masses governed by the law of gravity. It utilizes the concept of attraction and repulsion to optimize solutions within a population.
• Harmony Memory Consideration (HMCR)
• HMCR maintains a memory of past solutions and combines them based on memory considerations to generate new candidate solutions.
• Harmony Memory Upgrade (HMU)
• HMU improves upon the Harmony Search algorithm by incorporating a memory consideration operator for better solution generation.
• Harmony Search Algorithm (HS)
• Inspired by musical improvisation, HS searches for optimal solutions by iteratively creating new "harmonies" based on memory and pitch adjustment rules within a population.
• Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA)
• ICA models the competition and cooperation between empires and colonies. It evolves a population of imperialists and colonies to find optimal solutions.
• Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
• Based on the collective behavior of a swarm of particles, PSO optimizes solutions by iteratively updating particle positions and velocities.
• Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm (SFLA)
• SFLA is inspired by the hierarchical behavior of frogs. It employs a population of virtual frogs that undergo local search, individual learning, social learning, and shuffling to explore and improve solutions.
• Simulated Annealing (SA)
• Inspired by the annealing process in metallurgy, SA simulates the cooling and solidification of a material to search for optimal solutions.
• Tabu Search (TS)
• TS maintains a short-term memory of past moves and uses a tabu list to avoid revisiting recently explored solutions, enabling exploration of new regions in the search space.
• Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS)
• VNS systematically explores different neighborhoods around solutions to escape local optima and find better solutions.