Free video lectures, Free downloadable video lectures, Free Anim This Modern World MeaningofLife.tv Photojournal: NASA's Image Access Home Page Free Science Videos and Lectures: Free Education Online is Possi HowTo: EC2 for Poets Survivorship Bias in Startups During World War 2, the allied military wanted to add some more protective armour to their planes. However, they could only add a limited amount of armour to each plane before they became too heavy to fly. This meant that they had to choose specific parts of the plane to attach armour (and leave un-armoured) to optimise the number of planes returning home. Collecting data They began by gathering data and analysing the locations of the bullet holes on all the planes in their fleet. Their initial idea was to attach armour to the places which had been, on average across the whole fleet, the most peppered by bullets. They found that there were more bullets holes per square foot in the wings and the fuselage than in the engine and fuel system. Not what Abraham Wald thought… However, a mathematician named Abraham Wald, quoted by many as being the cleverest man in any room, saw the situation differently. Why? Well, all of the planes that they were analysing had come home safely. Feature Creep
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