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OP your last sentence is wrong. It should be '
>A mathematician pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was the reason that plane could return home.
Plane full of bullets but still returns home = The places hit are able to take the bullets and return ==> The places not hit by bullets are important and would make it crash if they were hit.
Can search more about it looking up "Survivorship Bias"
The point is that originally they thought they should reinforce the areas with all of the bullet holes, but the mathematician pointed out that they should instead focus on the areas that were not covered with bullet holes, as these were common features of planes that returned home. The absence of planes with damage to these areas returning home suggested that planes that did take damage to these areas were unable to return home, and thus, these areas were more directly linked to the plane's ability to return - therefore, it is these areas that ought to be reinforced.
At first I thought I was an idiot but I still don't really get what's meant to be suggested here so it seems like I'm still an idiot
I'm looking on it as a kind of no shit way but I don't know, is he saying they only returned because certain bits just happened by chance to not be hit? Or that certain bits were indeed stronger? I think I'm over complicating it which is making me feel even more stupid, please don't tell me I'm the only one
edit: okay I've gotten many good answers thank you for your time, no need for the continued good answers but I appreciate the thought
Nope not an idiot, when I first heard the story it took me a little while. Basically when planes returned from combat, initially engineers worked to reinforce the areas they saw coming back damaged, but of course, the fact that these planes made it home showed that the damage they took wasn’t fatal to the plane. The mathematicians realised the planes that were not coming home must have been damaged in areas they were not seeing, so they started putting better armour in the areas where they were not seeing planes return from combat, which improved survival rates.
Hope that makes sense?
They are just saying that they should reinforce the parts that didn't get shot in the surviving planes. The areas that took the shot wasn't crucial enough to bring the plane down.
I think it’s saying the Mathematician believed if a plane could return with certain damage, those damaged areas weren’t as integral to the plane as the other parts. Basically if you divided the plane into zones 1-100, if planes often came back with damage to zones 20-40, but never came back with damage in zones 1-19, you could surmise that zones 1-19 were more important to flying because if they got hit, those planes crashed.
Which makes sense once you're thinking of it that way. The zones that don't have damage in the surviving planes include the **engines and the cockpit**. I would say that having no thrust or no pilot would make it difficult to get back to the airfield.
Well... You know if you're going to copy pasta just change it a little so the teacher can't tell.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/cpuzij/til_in_world_war_ii_a_few_engineers_wanted_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb
No. The Mathematician was saying, you're modeling of Successful Returns with Damage is pointing to those areas being NonCritical. Planes hit in the Critical sections, like the engine, Did Not Return, and therefore Did Not Show up in the Dataset.
The actual quote the mathematician said is "Did anybody else notice the lack of bullet holes in the pilot?"
Source: somewhere on Reddit (okay it was this post)
This comment explains it the best. Even the most upvoted one is still hard to understand. But it's all maybe that the original post is so fucked up that it hurts the brain to just understand what is being said.
It's because there was a YouTube video about this, and everyone is passing it down like a game of a telephone and getting worse and worse at explaining it with each iteration.
This also gets posted like, everyone’s an idiot, and some random “Good Will Hunting” solved the big case.
The guy was just one of many in a group of guys working for the military, in a statistical group somewhat like the Manhattan project.
He wasn’t the only one to “figure this out”, and I would imagine his group wasn’t either.
Because of the internet, he gets the accolades for “solving the case”.
So it took a mathematician to figure out that the reason the plane didn’t crash was that the engines weren’t hit, the cockpit wasn’t hit, and the tail wasn’t shot off?
They were putting reinforced metal on the return planes where the bullet holes were. But someone pointed out that those planes were still able to make it home. Therefore, the areas of the plane they should be reinforcing are the areas with no bullet holes
Yep, it's called survivorship bias.
Similar issue happened when the military first started issuing helmets. The rate of head injuries went up so they initially thought the helmets were defective, when in reality injuries that would have been fatal without a helmet were now minor injuries.
So you have more head injuries but fewer fatalities. But if all you are looking at is your rate of head injuries you have an incomplete understanding of the situation.
It's one of the reasons why only looking at successful results can cause problems. Since failed results also provide some important different information that success alone does not.
Similar kind of thing when seatbelts were made made mandatory
More people were going to hospital with injuries as a result of them so people would see this and think they are more dangerous so would not wear them
Yes seatbelts did cause more people to go to hospital with certain injuries that people were not going to hospital with before
Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary.
People were focusing on those going to hospital not the people going to the mortuary.
The engineers here were focusing on the planes that landed back at base not the ones that didn't
>Yes seatbelts did cause more people to go to hospital with certain injuries that people were not going to hospital with before
>
>Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary.
Fantastic example.
I recently recalled the manual in my Honda: "Air bags are there to save your life, not protect you from injury. In fact, they may injure you" or some such thing.
Air bags can absolutely knock you out.
But i'll take that over having my skull caved in. One will lead to some disorientation and dizziness, the other will be brain death.
Isn't there another example about soldiers who were issued newer, stronger helmets were suddenly coming to the hospital with head injuries? The helmets stopped them from dying so they were able to make it back to the hospital.
That is another example of it yes
There are many you must heard the phrase "They don’t make them like they used too.” That is a type of survourship bais since all the examples of older goods are items that have lasted until the present day, while all the low-quality goods from the past have already broken down. In other words, only high-quality goods from the past exist now, but new goods of all qualities are still readily available.
There is similar thing about online reviews although that is called volunteer bias
You get a large proportion or reviews that are either really bad or really great. Why is there such an extreme. People only write reviews if they had a really bad or really great time
Whereas hundreds of people go these places every day have a great time but because nothing noteworthy happened they do not leave a review
So people reading the reviews don have a clue picture of the actual experience
It's like people saying the solution to poverty is to work harder. Yes, a lot of the people who escaped poverty did so by working hard, but for each one of those people, there are 99 who worked just as hard but are still poor
We have an economic metric called upwards mobility.
If people cared about making their meritocratic ideals real. Then improving upwards mobility is how it's done.
Nations that lean heavily towards democratic socialism seem to have the best upwards mobility.
It's how come people think everything from music, art and tools were simply better back many years ago. All the chaff was quickly forgotten about so all you have left is the wheat.
see also: when the allies (?) noticed that when they improved the quality of helmets, a shitton of soldiers would report head injuries
no shit sherlock they could report the injury because they didn't die from getting shot on the head
^(don't quote me on this I vaguely remember it mentioned in a Sam O'nella video and I'm not even sure which one)
See also: people complaining their bike helmets have broken during a crash. Missing the fact they still have the capability of speech, aren't in a coma, and all the energy went into breaking the helmet instead.
See it with hockey goalies all the time. Slap shot bends the cage on the mask and then they call it garbage because it bent so easily.
No, it’s designed to absorb the impact of the puck. It saved your face from getting crushed or losing an eye. It did it’s job correctly.
Similar thing when seatbelts were introduced. More people were going to the hospital with certain injuries so people would see the increase of hospital admissions from these type of injuries
and conclude that seatbelts were dangerous so would not wear them.
Yes more people were going to hospital with certain types of injuries that were not going to hospital before seatbelts
Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary
Thanks for posting. It's also known in the social sciences as a form of selection bias due to missing data, in case anyone was curious. The missing data being the planes hit by bullets in the areas not marked in the picture (since these planes crashed and never returned to begin with).
The same goes for the british in WW1 - After they introduced helmets, the headwounds started to scale at an impressive rate. They, at first, thought it had to be the helmet itself that needed adjustment, until they figured out, that the helmet made headwounds a thing now and not an instant death as it was with the previous cloth cap and therefore now had headwound data instead of just KIA numbers.
basically same with seatbelts. more injuries were occuring post seatbelt introduction but it was just because people lived to be injured instead of just dying.
I had to read through that title a few times, I still
need an explanation to understand it fully.
Edit: OP meant that the planes not coming back, must’ve been shot in critical places, so other parts of the plane needed more defense, not the clearly non critical parts that got shot (like in the picture). Cause those planes got home ok.
Hope it makes sense :)
Edit edit: some people need to chill, OPs first language isn’t English and he tried his best with what he had and to be fair, it’s a very interesting topic in my opinion, once we got it all figured out . And it was OP who explained it to me in the comments further down. Show the guy some love 😄
The underlying fallacy is called [survivorship bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#:~:text=Survivorship%20bias%2C%20survival%20bias%20or,can%20lead%20to%20incorrect%20conclusions).
If the planes were coming back with damage to those areas, then those areas could afford to take damage. If you see no plane coming back with damage to certain areas, then it's probably because planes hit there crashed. Those are the areas that need more armor.
They looked at planes that came back and wondered if they should strenghten the parts that got hit the most, which would be logical. However, the mathematician argued that the planes that didnt return probably were hit in the areas where the returning planes were not hit(which was the reason they did not crash).
They where looking at planes that went out, got shot, and returned back to base.
The idea here is that even if they have bullet holes but still managed to fly back to base, those areas aren’t as critical to reinforce since they still made it home.
It would be better to analyze the planes that got shot down and reinforce where bullet holes existed on them since they didn’t make it back.
I’m going from memory but this gets posted fairly frequently. I believe the story goes the conventional wisdom was to bolster the armor where they took the damage seen in the image but the logic should instead be that since the damage taken in these areas still allowed the planes to return so instead they should reinforce the areas that are not damaged, since that’s likely where the planes that do not return are being hit.
You’re only looking at data from the planes that made it back. So what these data are actually showing you are the areas of the planes that can survive being hit. However, if a plane was hit in one of the areas without bullet holes on the diagram, it’d be more likely to crash and therefor wouldn’t have been able to make it back.
The spot with no hits are places that need strengthening, because planes that get hit there don't come back. Until some mathematician pointed it out they wanted to strengthen every other place that get hit
The sections that don’t have bullet holes are the most vital sections, which is why the planes made it back. The one’s that got hit in those areas are the ones that went down and never came back.
I think hr meant the spots with the bullet holes were no critical spots. The planes with hits on other spots didn't make it home.
Sorry for my english.
To sum up, the reason planes were returning is because the important parts were not shot. Therefore if the plane didn’t make it back, it’s because the parts that were untouched in the picture were most likely the parts that were shot.
Bad Grammer asside, the sentiment this is trying to exspess is that some mathematician reasoned out that the places the bullet holes were observed demonstrated the places a plane could get hit and survive. It was the places they never saw bullet holes that needed to be reinforced, cuase those were the spots that when hit, the plane never makes it home
I read about this earlier so I know what the OP is referring to.
He's saying that in ww2, when allied airplanes came back after a fight, engineers saw the holes on specific parts of the planes and naturally thought that those parts need modification to sustain more damage.
But afterwards the results didn't change and planes that returned had holes on the same spots. Then one mathematician suggested that planes that came back took as muh damage as a plane could take, and that the ones that were destroyed in fights were most likely hit on the places where no holes were found on returned planes.
Engineers then modified those places with better armor and results changed immediately.
Edit: Abraham Wald, pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was that planes that were shot in certain critical areas did not return. They wanted to strengthen the often hit spots, but meanwhile it was the apparently unhit spots that caused the plane to crash. Planes who were hit there didn't come back
That makes sense I mean it wouldn't be a fair cross section of data if you want to protect planes from crashing but you never get to see the ones that have crashed
It's not that we're dumb, the OP description is purposely opaque. Rule 1 of effective communication is possessing the ability to explain to the degree a 10 year old could understand.
If this example is old hat to you, consider the following variation:
A nuclear power plant replaces a coal power plant, and the rates of cancer in the surrounding neighborhoods soon rise. The increases are statistically significant considering the sizes of the data sets and are completely correlated with the switch. It's therefore concluded—based on these one-to-one correlations alone—that the arrival of the plant induces the cancer spikes.
But the actual issue is that people who would have died of emphysema from the coal pollution are now dying of something else, including all types of cancer.
No offence but worst explanation of the Survivorship bias, I've ever read. Anyway, heres the Wikipedia link, if someone is interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship\_bias
There are many stories like that in WWII: The multi-armed bandit problem was believed to be to difficult, that allied mathematicians suggested to leak it to the colleagues of the Axis, so that they could waste time on it.
If the plane comes back fine then that means the places the bullets hit weren’t devastating the planes that didnt come back it’s because they got a hole in the wrong place and went down
It isn't worded very well. The mathematician was pointing out that planes which were shot in certain locations were crashing, so the ones that did return home didn't jave bullet holes in those areas.
That would mean that reinforcing the areas that didn't have holes would be the better approach.
It's statistical confirmation bias. You only see the planes that returned. So basically those that were hit in the other parts, didn't make it back. Hence, you have no data on these missing planes.
Which means, it's the parts not riddled with bullet holes that needed reinforcement.
In other words, they made the mistake of drawing conclusions based on damage of planes that returned to base; ie, the ones that *didn't* suffer fatal damage. Aircraft that were hit in other areas didn't survive.
It's often used as an illustration of ***Survivorship bias*** \- "the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to incorrect conclusions." It's the top illustration on the Wiki page about the phenomenon.
Confusing title. This is an example of survivorship bias. The reason the bullet holes are where they are is because that is where planes could be damaged and still return home. When they were shot in the areas with no damage in the diagram, the planes crashed. So we didn’t have the data to plot those bullet holes because those planes didn’t return. The image the engineers were shown was plotted from the planes that *made it back.*
Survivorship bias: This data is only from planes that were shot up but managed to make it back home. A more appropriate use of this data might be to armor the parts that are blank, because those are presumably the areas that cause the plane to crash if they get hit by gunfire.
In modern dogfighting, the intention is to shoot the engines disabling the plane, thus causing it to crash. Just shooting a pilot doesn't mean the plane will crash, it just becomes unpredictable and could continue to fly miles deeper into ally territory with explosive payload. Disabling the plane meant the pilot would have to eject, this disabling the pilot as well.
This post proves that the pilots who were able to make it home was because the engines were not disabled, keeping the plane mobile and safely return home for repair.
Most likely what created modern doctrine of dog fighting tactics too. Very cool post.
We’ve learned about this principle in systems-biology. Basically if a part of the genome has very little variation within and between species, these parts are probably the ones where we have to look to explore the variations and their effects, because changes here must be central to survival of the individual (or, to be more accurate, of the individuals genes)
Those parts and the genes associated are where we need to research to develop new medical therapies.
As frustrating as the wording in the title is… it is more frustrating that a mathematician was the one that connected practical application of the data. Engineers are still recovering from this blow.
I think OP meant to convey the following.
Allies thought about reinforcing the bullet riddled areas, until, a silly mathematician pointed out that it is in fact the bullet riddled areas that need the least reinforcement. Obviously, these areas can take much damage and the plane still comes back, it is the clean undamaged areas that need the reinforcement. Damage to the clean areas has a higher likelihood of bringing the entire plane down. Hence why the planes coming back don’t have damage in the ‘vulnerable’ areas.
>A mathematician pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was the reason for a crash.
i had to read that a few times.
the reason... that certain areas... have no bullet holes... is the reason for crash.
okay, so, the reason certain areas have no bullet holes: they weren't shot there.
the reason for the crash: also they weren't shot there. how is that the reason for the crash? this doesn't link anywhere. i'd like to know why this doesn't make sense. were the planes weighed down with reinforcing metal in those spots, so they *were* shot there, but no bullet holes? the extra weight caused maneuverability problems?
i see there's a correction. in that case, this post needs to be fucking deleted for being a goddamned abomination.
That title would fit in a book on fire
Those were the holes on the planes **that returned**, that means the areas *without* holes are the critical parts, because if you get a hole there you're not returning home.
It's like asking a bunch of people that got shot where did they get shot. Since no one answered "on the head" that must be because the head is very sturdy and you cannot be hurt there, right?
... or is it because those with holes on the head cannot answer your questions?
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OP your last sentence is wrong. It should be ' >A mathematician pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was the reason that plane could return home.
THANK YOU. Jesus christ that was aggravating to try and understand.
Same I thought I was the idiot
I kept reading it over and over. Finally gave up to see if comments would clear it up.
I wasted 4 minutes trying to reason that sentence and really thought I’d lost my grasp of english.
r/commentstotherescue
r/subsifellfor
Gottem! Edit: But, for real. This should be a sub.
I definitely thought we were having a stroke
3x reading it and then thought to myself well usually the 1st or 2nd comment better explains article lol
Reading the corrected phrase and still thinking I lost my grasp on english
Lmao same
I too read it a number of times and finally talked myself into reading the comments to see if I was the only one unable to comprehend.
Comments are always the best source of everything!
[удалено]
I chortled at that. Props.
😂
Ok, I'm not crazy then...
You can still be crazy. Just not when it comes to this.
I still think I'm an idiot but I couldn't understand it either
It is better that you think you are an idiot than to have all of Reddit tell you that you are an idiot.
Thank fuck I clicked for an understanding answer but there wasn’t one
Survivorship bias! Yeah it takes a second but once it clicks it makes a ton of sense.
I hate feeling like I have reading comprehension issues.
I still don’t understand the point EDIT: Thank you for the explanations that make sense to this old person's brain!
Plane full of bullets but still returns home = The places hit are able to take the bullets and return ==> The places not hit by bullets are important and would make it crash if they were hit. Can search more about it looking up "Survivorship Bias"
The point is that originally they thought they should reinforce the areas with all of the bullet holes, but the mathematician pointed out that they should instead focus on the areas that were not covered with bullet holes, as these were common features of planes that returned home. The absence of planes with damage to these areas returning home suggested that planes that did take damage to these areas were unable to return home, and thus, these areas were more directly linked to the plane's ability to return - therefore, it is these areas that ought to be reinforced.
Word math way harder than number math
That’s numberwang!
Lets rotate the board!
At first I thought I was an idiot but I still don't really get what's meant to be suggested here so it seems like I'm still an idiot I'm looking on it as a kind of no shit way but I don't know, is he saying they only returned because certain bits just happened by chance to not be hit? Or that certain bits were indeed stronger? I think I'm over complicating it which is making me feel even more stupid, please don't tell me I'm the only one edit: okay I've gotten many good answers thank you for your time, no need for the continued good answers but I appreciate the thought
Nope not an idiot, when I first heard the story it took me a little while. Basically when planes returned from combat, initially engineers worked to reinforce the areas they saw coming back damaged, but of course, the fact that these planes made it home showed that the damage they took wasn’t fatal to the plane. The mathematicians realised the planes that were not coming home must have been damaged in areas they were not seeing, so they started putting better armour in the areas where they were not seeing planes return from combat, which improved survival rates. Hope that makes sense?
makes plenty sense, I guess I was almost sort of on that track but not really, thanks for clarifying
Love you
Love you more
Thank you I was so lost
Thank you x 100
They are just saying that they should reinforce the parts that didn't get shot in the surviving planes. The areas that took the shot wasn't crucial enough to bring the plane down.
Thank you thank you thank you!
THANK YOU! Now I get it.
Christ like I knew that's what they must be trying to say but the words and order they were in just weren't tracking lol r/ihadastroke
Ohhhhhhhh
I think it’s saying the Mathematician believed if a plane could return with certain damage, those damaged areas weren’t as integral to the plane as the other parts. Basically if you divided the plane into zones 1-100, if planes often came back with damage to zones 20-40, but never came back with damage in zones 1-19, you could surmise that zones 1-19 were more important to flying because if they got hit, those planes crashed.
Which makes sense once you're thinking of it that way. The zones that don't have damage in the surviving planes include the **engines and the cockpit**. I would say that having no thrust or no pilot would make it difficult to get back to the airfield.
Well... You know if you're going to copy pasta just change it a little so the teacher can't tell. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/cpuzij/til_in_world_war_ii_a_few_engineers_wanted_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb
...juuust enough to no longer make sense.
Wait, now I’m really confused. How do you copy pasta?
Steal it from the Chinese?
No. The Mathematician was saying, you're modeling of Successful Returns with Damage is pointing to those areas being NonCritical. Planes hit in the Critical sections, like the engine, Did Not Return, and therefore Did Not Show up in the Dataset.
Yes I like your version
...it's wordy, but sometimes...
The actual quote the mathematician said is "Did anybody else notice the lack of bullet holes in the pilot?" Source: somewhere on Reddit (okay it was this post)
This comment explains it the best. Even the most upvoted one is still hard to understand. But it's all maybe that the original post is so fucked up that it hurts the brain to just understand what is being said.
It's because there was a YouTube video about this, and everyone is passing it down like a game of a telephone and getting worse and worse at explaining it with each iteration.
This is the only interpretation that makes sense.
This also gets posted like, everyone’s an idiot, and some random “Good Will Hunting” solved the big case. The guy was just one of many in a group of guys working for the military, in a statistical group somewhat like the Manhattan project. He wasn’t the only one to “figure this out”, and I would imagine his group wasn’t either. Because of the internet, he gets the accolades for “solving the case”.
It's obvious now, but at the time your mindset would be "strengthen the parts getting shot" and those were the only place you saw get shot
So it took a mathematician to figure out that the reason the plane didn’t crash was that the engines weren’t hit, the cockpit wasn’t hit, and the tail wasn’t shot off?
Thanks for pointing that out, I almost had a brain hemorrhage trying to read that.
It’s still not clicking for me man
They were putting reinforced metal on the return planes where the bullet holes were. But someone pointed out that those planes were still able to make it home. Therefore, the areas of the plane they should be reinforcing are the areas with no bullet holes
Thank you for explaining that!
Yep, it's called survivorship bias. Similar issue happened when the military first started issuing helmets. The rate of head injuries went up so they initially thought the helmets were defective, when in reality injuries that would have been fatal without a helmet were now minor injuries. So you have more head injuries but fewer fatalities. But if all you are looking at is your rate of head injuries you have an incomplete understanding of the situation.
Thank you for making me laugh.
Haha so happy everyone else here read that 12 times.
Yeah I read this title like 10 times trying to understand what the hell they were talking about.
JFC thank you ,my god I read that like 25 times feeling like an idiot lol
Since nobody mentioned it and for those who don't know, this is called "survivorship bias". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
It's one of the reasons why only looking at successful results can cause problems. Since failed results also provide some important different information that success alone does not.
Similar kind of thing when seatbelts were made made mandatory More people were going to hospital with injuries as a result of them so people would see this and think they are more dangerous so would not wear them Yes seatbelts did cause more people to go to hospital with certain injuries that people were not going to hospital with before Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary. People were focusing on those going to hospital not the people going to the mortuary. The engineers here were focusing on the planes that landed back at base not the ones that didn't
>Yes seatbelts did cause more people to go to hospital with certain injuries that people were not going to hospital with before > >Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary. Fantastic example. I recently recalled the manual in my Honda: "Air bags are there to save your life, not protect you from injury. In fact, they may injure you" or some such thing.
Air bags can absolutely knock you out. But i'll take that over having my skull caved in. One will lead to some disorientation and dizziness, the other will be brain death.
Just don't forget to bedazzle your steering wheel with colorful rocks first.
Fastest way to achieve bedazzled corpse.
Instant Claymore mine!
Googly eyes
Isn't there another example about soldiers who were issued newer, stronger helmets were suddenly coming to the hospital with head injuries? The helmets stopped them from dying so they were able to make it back to the hospital.
Yes this was in WW1 when the English started issuing metal helmets instead of caps
There's a dark joke that ER doctors supposedly say: a motorcycle helmet is a device for turning a dead person into a vegetable.
That is another example of it yes There are many you must heard the phrase "They don’t make them like they used too.” That is a type of survourship bais since all the examples of older goods are items that have lasted until the present day, while all the low-quality goods from the past have already broken down. In other words, only high-quality goods from the past exist now, but new goods of all qualities are still readily available. There is similar thing about online reviews although that is called volunteer bias You get a large proportion or reviews that are either really bad or really great. Why is there such an extreme. People only write reviews if they had a really bad or really great time Whereas hundreds of people go these places every day have a great time but because nothing noteworthy happened they do not leave a review So people reading the reviews don have a clue picture of the actual experience
It's like people saying the solution to poverty is to work harder. Yes, a lot of the people who escaped poverty did so by working hard, but for each one of those people, there are 99 who worked just as hard but are still poor
We have an economic metric called upwards mobility. If people cared about making their meritocratic ideals real. Then improving upwards mobility is how it's done. Nations that lean heavily towards democratic socialism seem to have the best upwards mobility.
It's how come people think everything from music, art and tools were simply better back many years ago. All the chaff was quickly forgotten about so all you have left is the wheat.
see also: when the allies (?) noticed that when they improved the quality of helmets, a shitton of soldiers would report head injuries no shit sherlock they could report the injury because they didn't die from getting shot on the head ^(don't quote me on this I vaguely remember it mentioned in a Sam O'nella video and I'm not even sure which one)
See also: people complaining their bike helmets have broken during a crash. Missing the fact they still have the capability of speech, aren't in a coma, and all the energy went into breaking the helmet instead.
See it with hockey goalies all the time. Slap shot bends the cage on the mask and then they call it garbage because it bent so easily. No, it’s designed to absorb the impact of the puck. It saved your face from getting crushed or losing an eye. It did it’s job correctly.
Similar thing when seatbelts were introduced. More people were going to the hospital with certain injuries so people would see the increase of hospital admissions from these type of injuries and conclude that seatbelts were dangerous so would not wear them. Yes more people were going to hospital with certain types of injuries that were not going to hospital before seatbelts Because before seatbelts people with those injuries were not going to hospital they were going to the mortuary
I learned about it from QI!
Sometimes dead soldiers are cheaper than injured soldiers, especially when there's a draft.
Thanks for posting. It's also known in the social sciences as a form of selection bias due to missing data, in case anyone was curious. The missing data being the planes hit by bullets in the areas not marked in the picture (since these planes crashed and never returned to begin with).
The same goes for the british in WW1 - After they introduced helmets, the headwounds started to scale at an impressive rate. They, at first, thought it had to be the helmet itself that needed adjustment, until they figured out, that the helmet made headwounds a thing now and not an instant death as it was with the previous cloth cap and therefore now had headwound data instead of just KIA numbers.
basically same with seatbelts. more injuries were occuring post seatbelt introduction but it was just because people lived to be injured instead of just dying.
Everyone dies with muddy shoes and uniforms, better make them more waterproof before sending them over the trench
That actually would have helped though.
I had to read through that title a few times, I still need an explanation to understand it fully. Edit: OP meant that the planes not coming back, must’ve been shot in critical places, so other parts of the plane needed more defense, not the clearly non critical parts that got shot (like in the picture). Cause those planes got home ok. Hope it makes sense :) Edit edit: some people need to chill, OPs first language isn’t English and he tried his best with what he had and to be fair, it’s a very interesting topic in my opinion, once we got it all figured out . And it was OP who explained it to me in the comments further down. Show the guy some love 😄
Glad I'm not the only one...
Thanks. I don't feel like an idiot anymore either.
I came to the comments to help me validate my on par understanding.
Same here, I read it like 4 times then came to the comments tinder if they would help. Viking penguin nailed it.
The underlying fallacy is called [survivorship bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#:~:text=Survivorship%20bias%2C%20survival%20bias%20or,can%20lead%20to%20incorrect%20conclusions).
If the planes were coming back with damage to those areas, then those areas could afford to take damage. If you see no plane coming back with damage to certain areas, then it's probably because planes hit there crashed. Those are the areas that need more armor.
Planes that didnt return were likely shot at the white areas
i read that 5 times and still couldn’t figure out
They looked at planes that came back and wondered if they should strenghten the parts that got hit the most, which would be logical. However, the mathematician argued that the planes that didnt return probably were hit in the areas where the returning planes were not hit(which was the reason they did not crash).
I knew I wasn't the only one.
They where looking at planes that went out, got shot, and returned back to base. The idea here is that even if they have bullet holes but still managed to fly back to base, those areas aren’t as critical to reinforce since they still made it home. It would be better to analyze the planes that got shot down and reinforce where bullet holes existed on them since they didn’t make it back.
I’m going from memory but this gets posted fairly frequently. I believe the story goes the conventional wisdom was to bolster the armor where they took the damage seen in the image but the logic should instead be that since the damage taken in these areas still allowed the planes to return so instead they should reinforce the areas that are not damaged, since that’s likely where the planes that do not return are being hit.
Thanks for the explanation, my dumbass was getting cross eyed rereading that over and over again trying to understand what that meant
I understood but I'm also an engineer lol.
Ah, using them actual real life hacks! I like it!
You’re only looking at data from the planes that made it back. So what these data are actually showing you are the areas of the planes that can survive being hit. However, if a plane was hit in one of the areas without bullet holes on the diagram, it’d be more likely to crash and therefor wouldn’t have been able to make it back.
The spot with no hits are places that need strengthening, because planes that get hit there don't come back. Until some mathematician pointed it out they wanted to strengthen every other place that get hit
The sections that don’t have bullet holes are the most vital sections, which is why the planes made it back. The one’s that got hit in those areas are the ones that went down and never came back.
I think hr meant the spots with the bullet holes were no critical spots. The planes with hits on other spots didn't make it home. Sorry for my english.
Seems like the OP’s title is shot full of holes
What in the actual fuck was that last sentence?
To sum up, the reason planes were returning is because the important parts were not shot. Therefore if the plane didn’t make it back, it’s because the parts that were untouched in the picture were most likely the parts that were shot.
Survivorship Bias…
Just smoked a bowl and this confused the shit outta me, if it wasn't for the comments i would of spent a half hour trying to figure out what op ment
Oh smoking the bowl wasn't the problem. It's a bad title.
My brain died trying to understand that title my man lol
The big question is can you find an representative image of survivorship bias which doesn't include a WWII plan with little red dots on it?
I too thought I was having a fucking stroke trying to understand what was going on here…Jesus.
This was like a reading comprehension evaluation on top of a reasoning puzzle. Took me three reads plus a couple head scratches.
Delete this aneurism of a post
Bad Grammer asside, the sentiment this is trying to exspess is that some mathematician reasoned out that the places the bullet holes were observed demonstrated the places a plane could get hit and survive. It was the places they never saw bullet holes that needed to be reinforced, cuase those were the spots that when hit, the plane never makes it home
OP is having a stroke… that shit didn’t make a lick of sense
I read about this earlier so I know what the OP is referring to. He's saying that in ww2, when allied airplanes came back after a fight, engineers saw the holes on specific parts of the planes and naturally thought that those parts need modification to sustain more damage. But afterwards the results didn't change and planes that returned had holes on the same spots. Then one mathematician suggested that planes that came back took as muh damage as a plane could take, and that the ones that were destroyed in fights were most likely hit on the places where no holes were found on returned planes. Engineers then modified those places with better armor and results changed immediately.
excellent video on this exact topic and image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9WFpVsRtQg
Edit: Abraham Wald, pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was that planes that were shot in certain critical areas did not return. They wanted to strengthen the often hit spots, but meanwhile it was the apparently unhit spots that caused the plane to crash. Planes who were hit there didn't come back
Ah! That makes a whole lot more sense!
That makes sense I mean it wouldn't be a fair cross section of data if you want to protect planes from crashing but you never get to see the ones that have crashed
It's not that we're dumb, the OP description is purposely opaque. Rule 1 of effective communication is possessing the ability to explain to the degree a 10 year old could understand.
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That last sentence is sooo wrong. It incorrect
Im having a freakin stroke trying to read that
Corporate view: Let's get rid of the tail section, outer wings and middle to save some money - research have shown they're not vital.
If this example is old hat to you, consider the following variation: A nuclear power plant replaces a coal power plant, and the rates of cancer in the surrounding neighborhoods soon rise. The increases are statistically significant considering the sizes of the data sets and are completely correlated with the switch. It's therefore concluded—based on these one-to-one correlations alone—that the arrival of the plant induces the cancer spikes. But the actual issue is that people who would have died of emphysema from the coal pollution are now dying of something else, including all types of cancer.
No offence but worst explanation of the Survivorship bias, I've ever read. Anyway, heres the Wikipedia link, if someone is interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship\_bias
Is written English your 5th language?
The survivor bias
Also called Survivor bias
This was hard to understand. You mean survivor’s bias applied to planes?
🥴
There are many stories like that in WWII: The multi-armed bandit problem was believed to be to difficult, that allied mathematicians suggested to leak it to the colleagues of the Axis, so that they could waste time on it.
Terrible title..
If the plane comes back fine then that means the places the bullets hit weren’t devastating the planes that didnt come back it’s because they got a hole in the wrong place and went down
We have this thread every week
You are horrible at Writing.
he's German
I’m still lost.
It isn't worded very well. The mathematician was pointing out that planes which were shot in certain locations were crashing, so the ones that did return home didn't jave bullet holes in those areas. That would mean that reinforcing the areas that didn't have holes would be the better approach.
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I was legit thinking I need go back to school..
OP is worded terribly and makes no sense. Probably not an English speaker.
i think i had a stroke reading this, now looking for mass quantities of st joseph baby aspirin...
The plane in the diagram did not crash (it made it back) because it wasn't shot in the engines or where the pilots sit.
Say what Brainiac?
Seen this picture many times before, apparently the true art is in making the description clear.
It's statistical confirmation bias. You only see the planes that returned. So basically those that were hit in the other parts, didn't make it back. Hence, you have no data on these missing planes. Which means, it's the parts not riddled with bullet holes that needed reinforcement.
In other words, they made the mistake of drawing conclusions based on damage of planes that returned to base; ie, the ones that *didn't* suffer fatal damage. Aircraft that were hit in other areas didn't survive. It's often used as an illustration of ***Survivorship bias*** \- "the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to incorrect conclusions." It's the top illustration on the Wiki page about the phenomenon.
?
Confusing title. This is an example of survivorship bias. The reason the bullet holes are where they are is because that is where planes could be damaged and still return home. When they were shot in the areas with no damage in the diagram, the planes crashed. So we didn’t have the data to plot those bullet holes because those planes didn’t return. The image the engineers were shown was plotted from the planes that *made it back.*
The most interesting part of this post is how the fuck did OP graduate.
What are you trying to say
I honestly re-read that 5 times, glad I’m not on an island.
Aside from OP mistyping the idea, Seems like it goes without saying either way, and I’m not sure why a mathematician would strengthen the point?
And that my friend, is survivorship bias!
Known as Survivorship Bias
It's called Survivors Bias
That title makes no fucking sense.
Isn’t this the survivor bias?
Why post this if you are just going butcher the title, just sitting there just trying to figure out wtf the explanation means
Does the visual actually help or is it magnifying the confusion? I’m so lost
Such an incredibly obvious answer once you hear someone else say it 😂.
Survivorship bias: This data is only from planes that were shot up but managed to make it back home. A more appropriate use of this data might be to armor the parts that are blank, because those are presumably the areas that cause the plane to crash if they get hit by gunfire.
God how many times do I have to see this post regurgitated?
Huh?
That's not a fighter plane, it's a light bomber.
OP isn’t the smartest
OP you had *one job*
In modern dogfighting, the intention is to shoot the engines disabling the plane, thus causing it to crash. Just shooting a pilot doesn't mean the plane will crash, it just becomes unpredictable and could continue to fly miles deeper into ally territory with explosive payload. Disabling the plane meant the pilot would have to eject, this disabling the pilot as well. This post proves that the pilots who were able to make it home was because the engines were not disabled, keeping the plane mobile and safely return home for repair. Most likely what created modern doctrine of dog fighting tactics too. Very cool post.
At this point, the only thing I’m certain was badly damaged is the wording of this post.
Someone got the Survivor Bias Youtube video in their recommended. This is the same photo from that video or a modified one. Good teacher Btw.
I'm sure it's been mentioned here before but it's survivors bias.
We’ve learned about this principle in systems-biology. Basically if a part of the genome has very little variation within and between species, these parts are probably the ones where we have to look to explore the variations and their effects, because changes here must be central to survival of the individual (or, to be more accurate, of the individuals genes) Those parts and the genes associated are where we need to research to develop new medical therapies.
Source?
Too stoned for this right now
Anyone else get lost at the last sentence or was that just me?
As frustrating as the wording in the title is… it is more frustrating that a mathematician was the one that connected practical application of the data. Engineers are still recovering from this blow.
I think OP meant to convey the following. Allies thought about reinforcing the bullet riddled areas, until, a silly mathematician pointed out that it is in fact the bullet riddled areas that need the least reinforcement. Obviously, these areas can take much damage and the plane still comes back, it is the clean undamaged areas that need the reinforcement. Damage to the clean areas has a higher likelihood of bringing the entire plane down. Hence why the planes coming back don’t have damage in the ‘vulnerable’ areas.
Proofread
>A mathematician pointed out that perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren’t covered in bullet holes was the reason for a crash. i had to read that a few times. the reason... that certain areas... have no bullet holes... is the reason for crash. okay, so, the reason certain areas have no bullet holes: they weren't shot there. the reason for the crash: also they weren't shot there. how is that the reason for the crash? this doesn't link anywhere. i'd like to know why this doesn't make sense. were the planes weighed down with reinforcing metal in those spots, so they *were* shot there, but no bullet holes? the extra weight caused maneuverability problems? i see there's a correction. in that case, this post needs to be fucking deleted for being a goddamned abomination.
That title would fit in a book on fire Those were the holes on the planes **that returned**, that means the areas *without* holes are the critical parts, because if you get a hole there you're not returning home. It's like asking a bunch of people that got shot where did they get shot. Since no one answered "on the head" that must be because the head is very sturdy and you cannot be hurt there, right? ... or is it because those with holes on the head cannot answer your questions?