Here is a little lesson on Survivorship Bias.

Ever heard of Abraham Wald.

Abraham Wald was a Jewish Hungarian Mathematician who was part of the the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University.

During World War II , American and Allied bomber planes were suffering major casualties. The US Army then went to the Statistical Research Group for help.

The military wanted to armor areas that were concentrated with bullet holes, mainly the wings and the body. Abraham Wald disagreed with the solution brought forward. He said that even though these areas had high concentrations of damage, the damage was survivable as the planes were still able to return home.

He advised the military to rather focus on areas that seemed to have little damage as that means that’s where the planes that didn’t come back got hit.

The military was making the mistake of focusing on the planes that came back instead of the planes that didn’t come back. ( Survivorship Bias)