Cognitive Scaffold

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MENTAL MODEL · M6405

Look-Elsewhere Effect

Look-Elsewhere Effect
TechnicalHigh supportPhysics
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

If you search for anomalies in enough places (e.g., looking for particles in 100 different energy intervals), the probability of seeing an anomaly 'somewhere' purely due to random fluctuations becomes extremely high. The significance threshold must be severely penalized (corrected) according to the size of the search space.###

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

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Data mining trap. In big data analysis, if you slice the data into 1000 dimensions, you will surely find a dimension showing 'performance growth'. But this is meaningless, purely random noise.

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When searching for anomalies across multiple hypotheses or intervals, the overall probability of at least one false positive increases sharply with the size of the search space (multiple comparisons). A p-value that appears significant in isolation may become insignificant after correction for the entire space.

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-elsewhere_effectZH · Explicit
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