However, sometimes effective behavior is aided by inaccurate judgments or cognitively adaptive illusions (Howe 2011). The statistical properties of small samples are a case in point. One feature of small samples is that correlations are amplified, making them easier to detect (Kareev 1995). This fact about small samples, when combined with the known limits to human short-term memory, suggests that our working-memory limits may be an adaptive response to our environment that we exploit at differe