Survivorship Bias

The latest big insight amongst the intellectually challenged US venture capitalists is survivorship bias. Geez they make me giggle. I was in a meeting with a handful of Silicon Valley idols discussing this concept. You might have thought Einstein had just dropped in with the missing tablets from the mount.

Just for the record this is the example they used for their seance. A study had been made of the damage to returning bombers in WWII and it had been proposed that extra armour be added to those areas that showed the most damage. Some guy had the insight that the holes from flak and bullets on the bombers that did return represented the areas where they were able to take damage and that extra armour should be added to where the returning planes had no hits. It worked.