Of course, any rational person understands that this method of estimation is flawed. Just because you happened to see a clown get run over by a dump truck yesterday and you can now easily recall this event, this doesn’t mean that this sort of thing happens all of the time. Likewise, just because a plane crashed recently or two mass murders occurred last week, this doesn’t make these events any more likely either. Nevertheless, studies on the availability heuristic consistently show that we estimate the probability of events occurring based in large part on how easily these events come to mind.
(Does not count as my post for the day, FYI.)