Survivor Bias

[CreamCat]

• During world war 2, people added armor to places where airplanes were hit. Actually, vital places were the ones that weren't hit.
  If vital parts were hit, an airplane wouldn't make it back to the base. Only airplanes that were hit in non-vital places made it back.
• You look at old buildings of high quality and assume that people used to build houses of higher quality in the past.
  Actually, high quality houses survived very long, and poorly built houses were scrapped.
  So, you can't judge the quality of housing of the past just by looking at old survivors.
• When you look only at survivors, your samples have survivor bias.
  Look at the whole sample including the failures.

By the way, people look at him as if he were a chimp in a zoo.

Edited June 19, 2019 by CreamCat

[YaMayka]

It reminds me of a great book I read - "Black box thinking" by Matthew Syed which covers learning from failure. Great book

 

Thanks for the video.