A fallacy of distribution is a logical fallacy occurring when an argument assumes there is no difference between a term in the distributive (referring to every member of a class) and collective (referring to the class itself as a whole) sense.

There are two variations of this fallacy:

• Fallacy of composition
  Fallacy of composition
  The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole...
  
   - assumes what is true of the parts is true of the whole. This fallacy is also known as "arguing from the specific to the general"

Since Judy is so diligent in the workplace, this entire company must have an amazing work ethic.

• Fallacy of division
  Fallacy of division
  A fallacy of division occurs when one reasons logically that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.An example:# A Boeing 747 can fly unaided across the ocean.# A Boeing 747 has jet engines....
  
   - assumes what is true of the whole is true of its parts (or some subset of parts).

Because this company is so corrupt, so must every employee within it be corrupt.

While fallacious, arguments that make these assumptions may be persuasive because of the representativeness heuristic

Representativeness heuristic

The representativeness heuristic is a psychological term describing a phenomenon wherein people judge the probability or frequency of a hypothesis by considering how much the hypothesis resembles available data as opposed to using a Bayesian calculation. While often very useful in everyday life, it...

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See also

• Existential fallacy
  Existential fallacy
  The existential fallacy, or existential instantiation, is a logical fallacy in Boolean logic while it is not in Aristotelian logic. In an existential fallacy, we presuppose that a class has members even when we are not explicitly told so; that is, we assume that the class has existential import.An...
  
  
• Ecological fallacy
  Ecological fallacy
  An ecological fallacy is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong...
  
  
• Fallacy of the undistributed middle
  Fallacy of the undistributed middle
  The fallacy of the undistributed middle is a logical fallacy, and more specifically a formal fallacy, that is committed when the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed in the major premise...
  
  
• Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny