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Cognition

Survivorship Bias

Invisible Failures.

The article

If

We study only the successes that survived and draw conclusions from them, ignoring the silent graveyard of failures that used the same strategy. The data we see is fundamentally skewed.

Then

Before adopting a strategy because "Company X succeeded with it," research how many companies failed using the same approach. The dead don't write blog posts.

Unless

Failure Studies / Post-mortem Culture

Source

Abraham Wald, A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability (SRG Memo, 1943) — the WWII bomber-armor analysis.

Go to the source

See also