During World War II, Allied statisticians applied the technique to minimize the number of bombers shot down by enemy artillery fire. By studying damage patterns on bombers returning from combat, it is possible to map the most frequently damaged parts of the aircraft and add expensive, heavy armor to these parts.
Wald claims the exact opposite. The planes they study are all those that return from combat with extensive damage, but what happens to the planes that don’t return? Wald says that every plane that returns is armored in undamaged places. argues that it should be added. This is because aircraft that hit these intact locations were shot down and never returned for investigation.
Survivorship Bias This phenomenon is known as survivorship bias. That is, the cognitive and statistical biases introduced by counting only what should be counted and ignoring what does not “survive.”
These examples can also be viewed as absurd. Imagine her group of 100 people, all of whom have smoked their entire lives. As a group, smokers die earlier from cancer, lung disease, and heart disease, but one or two people may defy the odds and live to be 100 years old.
Now imagine that an intrepid journalist interviewed people lucky enough to celebrate their 100th birthday, asking them the classic question: “What makes you grow old so well?” “I smoke a pack a day,” says the newly minted centenarian.
It may seem obvious, but survivorship bias exists everywhere in society. We can all think of one famous actor or entrepreneur who succeeded despite adversity, worked hard, believed in themselves, and one day achieved success. But we never read or hear about the countless examples of people who tried, tried their best, and did not completely succeed.
That’s not a good story for the media. However, this creates a bias and we mostly hear about the successes and never the failures. This bias often affects our perceptions of architecture (most of the great buildings of a given era “survive”) or finances (for example, those who succeed in risky investments and those who fail do not sell books or self-help schemes). (listen) applies. ) and career plans (“If you work hard and drop out of college now, you can become a successful athlete like me,” say successful people).
I work with a variety of older adults, some of whom are often extreme outliers who have lived very long lives. We are currently studying older adults aged 65 and older who maintain an unusually high level of physical activity and excellent health well into old age.
They are incredible examples of older people, and many of them are faster, healthier, and stronger than me in many measurements done in the lab, even though they are almost twice my age. .
We know that their lifelong exercise is associated with unusually good health into old age, but we still can’t directly say that one causes the other. Very active people may be protected from chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. However, because these people did not suffer from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease early in life, they may still be active at older ages.
Conversely, for these people, an unknown third factor, which we have not yet identified, may be keeping them healthy and separately exercising.
To be clear, there are things that scientists like me, speaking in carefully cautioned scientific terms, could probably help you live longer. Being very physically active, not eating too much, and not smoking are all on that list, plus having a generally positive outlook on life, and of course, This includes choosing suitable parents and grandparents.
Correlation does not equal causation. This point is hammered home mercilessly by science students. This is how our brain works, we recognize a pattern between her two variables and assume that they are somehow linked. But like survivorship bias, we don’t look at all the data, so we often find patterns that don’t exist. (Conversation) PY PY
This report was auto-generated from PTI News Service. ThePrint assumes no responsibility for its content.
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