A complaint was received by a high-ranking executive of a well known major automobile manufacturer:
“This is the second time I have written you, and I don’t blame you for not answering me, because I kind of sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of ice cream for dessert after dinner each night. But the kind of ice cream varies, so every night, after we’ve eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it.”
“It’s also a fact that I recently purchased one of your new automobiles and since then my trips to the store have created a problem. You see, every time I buy vanilla ice cream, when I start back from the store my car won’t start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I’m serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds: What is there about this car that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?”
The president of this auto manufacturer was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an engineer to check it out anyway. The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well-educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn’t start.
Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man’s car was “allergic to vanilla ice cream”. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And to this end he began to take notes: he jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas used, time to drive back and forth, etc.
In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store.
Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to find the flavor and get checked out.
Now the question for the engineer was why the car wouldn’t start when it took less time. Once time became the problem – not the vanilla ice cream – the engineer quickly came up with the answer: vapor lock. It was happening every night, but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate.
The “moral” of this story is that buying vanilla ice cream and the car failing to start are correlated events, however this story demonstrates that correlation does not mean causation. This is often the case in work environments. This story displays key factors used in the Kepner-Tregoe problem analysis process which save teams and organizations time and dollars. We hope you enjoyed this demonstration, a logical fallacy, and its resolution.
