Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that survived a selection process while overlooking those that did not, typically because the failures are less visible. It commonly distorts conclusions drawn from data such as successful companies, veteran investors or wartime aircraft that returned from missions, since the sample studied has already been filtered by whatever process determined survival. A frequently cited illustration is the World War Two statistician Abraham Wald's advice to reinforce the parts of returning bombers that showed no bullet damage, on the reasoning that planes hit in the unmarked areas were the ones that failed to return at all.
Facts
Core ClaimLooking only at the survivors of a selection process, such as returning aircraft or companies still in business, hides the cases that were filtered out along the way, which can make surviving examples look safer, luckier or more special than the full population actually was; Wald's WWII aircraft-armor analysis is the discipline's founding illustration. 1 First Described Year Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
In Branch
Source Wikipedia: Survivorship bias
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Survivorship bias
Wikimedia Foundationlead paragraph, definition
Survivorship bias or survivor bias is a statistical error that results from concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.
lead section, defining sentence
Survivorship bias or survivor bias is a statistical error that results from concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.
History section, opening sentence naming Abraham Wald, citing Wald (1943)
During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald described methods of estimating the vulnerability of various parts of an aircraft based on damage to surviving planes.
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
Survivorship bias or survivor bias is a statistical error that results from concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.
In Branch: Cognitive Psychology, Categories
Wikipedia article 'Survivorship bias' is filed under Category:Cognitive biases.
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