Survivorship Bias and WWII Bombers

[Red Hayek]

Found this, and thought some might find it interesting.

 

 

I'm still fairly new, so apologies if I've posted it in the wrong forum.

 

 

 

"During WWII, Allied bomber losses were high, so high that the British Air Ministry undertook a rigorous analysis in hopes of finding a solution. Their engineers set out to examine every bomber they could, gathering data on each bullet hole. After analyzing the results, engineers decided to reinforce the areas that had the highest concentrations of holes with armor plating.

 

It didn’t work.

 

 

Perplexed, the engineers assumed that the extra plating had made the planes too heavy, and that the difficulty in handling the planes was offsetting the protection of the armor plating.

Enter Abraham Wald.

 

 

 

Wald, a mathematician, suggested that they simply put extra armor plating where the bullet holes weren’t. The idea was simple: if the planes are returning with bullet holes, obviously those areas can be struck without causing the planes to crash. The planes that weren’t returning, Wald theorized, are the ones that are getting hit in different areas."

 

 

http://www.macgetit.com/solving-problems-of-wwii-bombers/

[Kippy]

Thanks for the share!

 

Putting armor where the bullet holes aren't appearing on returning aircraft is one of those ideas that seems obvious in hindsight but never seems to cross the mind during the problem solving process..

[javelina1]

great post, thanks! really does make sense.