Magnitude-Vector Confusion

The tendency to collapse multidimensional data into a single scalar, losing the directional information that makes it meaningful.

Inflation is a classic example: reporting “5% inflation” hides the vector of price changes across categories weighted by their importance to different people. My inflation is not your inflation, depending on whether you spend more on food, fuel, or housing.

Star ratings suffer the same problem. A 3.5 star average could represent uniform mediocrity or violent disagreement: half loving it, half hating it. The number destroys the distribution it summarizes.