What is Survivor Bias?

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What is Survivor Bias?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Ever hear people say “they don’t make X like they used to” and point out their X from 1980 that still works great? And then you look at all the X’s from 1980 and they ALL still work great. So obviously they were really well made, right?

No… it’s just that all the X’s from 1980 that aren’t really well made and still running great are scrapped in landfills so they aren’t around to count. But when you only count the ones that **survived**, it looks like they’re all super reliable.

More generally, it’s when a portion of the population no longer exists and you don’t account for that in your analysis.

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