I hear about survivorship bias, and I hear examples like “Bill Gates dropping out of college is survivorship bias”. I don’t really know how they correlate, or how to think of things with that in mind.
In: Culture
Survivorship bias is the idea that if we only look at the remaining subjects, it may skew our data. For instance, when armoring planes in WW2, the RAF (I think it was the RAF anyway) always added armor onto their airplanes in places where they found bullet holes. This did their planes very little good. Why? Because the airplanes that they were looking at were the survivors. If an airplane lands with a bullet hole in the wing, then that hole must not have done too much damage. If no airplanes land with bullet holes in the fuel tank, then the fuel tank is likely a critical component that needs armor.
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