Castle throwing a billionaire's self-help book into the tavern trash can is the exact kind of grounded, cynical pragmatism we need in the modern era of "hustle culture."

We are obsessed with studying the survivors.

During World War II, the Statistical Research Group (SRG) was tasked with figuring out how to better armor Allied bombers. The military brass looked at the planes limping back to base, saw the wings and tails riddled with bullet holes, and said, "Reinforce those areas."

Abraham Wald, a brilliant mathematician, had to point out their fatal logical error: The bullet holes on the wings show you exactly where a plane can take a hit and still survive. The planes that got hit in the engines were at the bottom of the ocean. They needed to put the armor where the bullet holes weren't.

This is Survivorship Bias, and we do it constantly.

We look at a billionaire and meticulously copy their morning routine. We buy their books. We take the ice baths. We wake up at 4:00 AM. But those habits are just the bullet holes on the wings. They aren't what keeps the plane in the air; they are just the non-fatal quirks that person happened to survive while getting incredibly lucky.

Crystal Planet - An Indian Survivorship Bias Example

Many of you must have seen that drawing of a World War II plane with red dots on it. It explains Survivorship bias, a bias that statistician Abraham Wald figured out. Pic: source Simply put, survivor bias is our tendency to view a situation or pattern as a comprehensive representative sample, often without considering what might be missing from that picture. For instance, the WWII plane with red…

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Abraham Wald's Statistical Decisions

The below article can be not much related to nowadays safety concept but it is an amazing example how statistics, e.g. methods of sequential analysis and sampling inspections can change the history.

In WWII, Allied bombers were key to strategic attacks, yet these lumbering giants were constantly shot down over enemy territory. The planes needed more armor, but armor is heavy. So extra plating could only go where the planes were being shot the most.

A man named Abraham Wald, a mathematician who’d been locked out of university positions and ultimately fled the persecution in his own home country of Hungary, was brought in to oversee the operation. He started with a simple diagram–the outline of a plane–and he marked bullet holes corresponding to where each returning bomber had been shot. The result was the anatomy of common plane damage. The wings, nose, and tail were blackened with bullet holes, so these were the spots that needed more armor.

Or at least that’s what people thought, until Wald flipped conventional logic on its head. He said the military didn’t need to reinforce the spots that had bullet holes. They needed to reinforce the spots that didn’t have bullet holes.