Division Fallacy
LSAT glossary · Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
Definition
A reasoning flaw that infers a property of an individual part from a property of the whole — assuming that what is true of a group as a whole must be true of each member of the group. Classic LSAT example: "Ms. Tarnowski's class collected more aluminum cans than any other class; therefore, the student who collected the most cans in the entire school must be in her class." The fallacy ignores that a group's aggregate property (highest total) can be produced by many moderate individual contributors and need not reside in any single member.
Division Fallacy in plain English
The division fallacy is jumping from "the team is great" to "so every player on it is great." It's a mistake because a group can have a trait that no single member has — a class can collect the most cans total just by having lots of average kids each tossing in a few, without any one super-collector. Think of a choir that sounds amazing: that doesn't prove any one singer would sound amazing alone; the beauty comes from everyone blending. So whenever an argument slides from "true of the whole" down to "true of each part," be suspicious.
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