Survivorship bias in engineering

You don't add armor plate to the areas of the returning bombers that were the most often shot up in the examples you have to work with, you add it to the areas where they're undamaged.

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Any other examples?

Reply to
bitrex
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Sure, in popular medicine. Claims of miraculous cures are usually provided by the survivors. Those who might have announced that the magic potion or miracle pill failed to work, are usually dead.

Among classic car enthusiasts, there's a perception that older cars are "better built" than modern cars. If challenged, the enthusiast will bring out his classic car and demonstrate the durability and overkill construction of his classic car. Unfortunately, not all classic cars were this well built. The inferior examples have long since rusted away and are not available as a counter example. Those that have survived are now valuable and are much better cared for than todays modern cars.

Glorified past civilizations and lifestyles are another example. Those that did well and made their mark on history are well studied, well documented, and honored by modern scholars. Those civilizations that screwed up badly, didn't bother leaving a written record, lost a major war, or were the victims of ethnic cleansing, tend to be viewed as obscure, are ignored, or have been simply lost. History is written by the winners.

Incidentally, it also works the other way around. In the repair business, all I see are broken computahs and machines. From my perspective, nothing works and everything is broken. I'm sure that there are computahs and machines that work flawlessly, but I never see them. Of course, I see more of the most popular and better selling computahs and machines, thus making me suspect that all the major manufacturers all produce junk.

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Jeff Liebermann

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Reply to
Simon S Aysdie

And beautiful ladies ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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Reply to
Jim Thompson

And yet when I complain about my Lenovo piece of junk many argue that they have had one that was "golden" and so mine must be an exception. This thing is a pure piece of crap! I came pretty close to getting a new one a week ago when I kept getting a blue screen of death. Finally I cycled power rather than just rebooting and it worked ok. Clearly that is not the software.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Hind-sight isn't always 20:20, but survival is a good enough indication for me.

How it is interpreted or justified is a separate issue.

WWII bombers were armoured with paint and prayers.

RL

Reply to
legg

The very mention of aircraft armour suggests that the author is spinning myth. To this day, it is not a priority.

Speed, range and payload. It was only fortuitous that multiple engines assisted in that goal - the main factor in ensuring the return of damaged machines (with whatever crew happened to hang on).

Oh, yeah....and all those electronic doohickeys they kept stuffing in there....mostly useless and primarily so they could deliver to the right address, but sometimes handy in avoiding trouble and figuring out where home was.

The bell curve - brains, experience and luck^2.

RL

Reply to
legg

Decades ago when I bought a copier my brother was a repair technician for an office supply company. I bought the model he said he never saw in the shop - it finally died a couple of weeks ago. I have no hope the multifunction printer replacement will last as long.

Reply to
Dennis

Sounds like stupidity by another name. Like you're really going to armor a flimsy airplane against this:

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-an artillery piece having the distinction of being the ONLY gun with enoug h energy to penetrate the Soviet T-34 tank glacis! The Wald story is apocryphal BULLSHIT! The real story is how the subhuman m orons in the U.S. spent nearly two decades and over a $1B in hard earned De pression era money to (mis-)develop the world's most inferior optical bombs ight that necessitated aircraft fly low and steady to achieve mediocre bomb ing accuracy in good weather with target illumination. At the same time the imbeciles were developing radar controlled anti-aircraft guns with high ki ll rates for precisely that type of flight profile! The two oceans are the primary reason for the U.S. not being overrun and burned to the ground, bec ause it sure wasn't due to intelligence.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

If you glance at this owners manual for the B-24, you'll see that they did indeed have armor plating, looks like mainly to give some protection to the crew from penetrating shrapnel:

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WW2 dive bombers were certainly armored, some with a thousand pounds of the stuff.

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Reply to
bitrex

...and more recently (and continuing to fight retirement since it's such a useful beast) the A-10 with it's titanium bathtub. OTOH, without re-reading God is my Copilot I recall mention of some armor in the seat back/bottom of the P-51 and not much else.

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Reply to
Ecnerwal

For something like a fighter or maybe even the A-10, the added speed and maneuverability from the lower weight would offset the protection of the armor. Let's face it, armor in an airplane can only do so much.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Nonsense. The A10's pilot sits in a titanium "bathtub". Many planes have/had armor plate in front of, or behind the pilot.

It doesn't do any good to go fast, or carry a lot of stuff, if you don't get to the target.

More nonsense.

Doesn't it seem odd that the highly skilled tend to be luckier?

Reply to
krw

The highly skilled look out for opportunities, recognise them and follow them to see where they might go. Most seem to have no interest in them at all, which seems odd to me.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

I don't know many who aren't interested in opportunities. I think many see themselves as much more limited than they are.

Heck, I know a 23 year old who has been an entrepreneur for a number of years now. She doesn't have many skills and home schooling left her with a sub-standard education, but she makes up for it with drive, tenacity and energy. Right now she landed a full time job and is in community college to make up some of the shortcomings of her education. In a couple of years she'll be ready to take on the world even though she is far from highly skilled. She just doesn't see limitations that aren't there and is willing to do something about the ones that are.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

'Hard work' is missing from that equation. The harder one works, the luckier one gets.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

Disagree. Not that I agree with the OP completely, he seems to be applying a principle that could apply to alot of things to that particular thing. Th ey call that iso- something or something in logic and math, I don't remembe r.

I remember reading and hearing actually that tail gunners had among the hig hest fatality rate in WW2. Seems logical, you are shooting at something tha t is shooting at you. However, the pilot must point the plane directly at t he target, the tail gunner must aim the gun. This leaves lots of room for e rror and you are not exactly comfortable.

I bitch about cops not being able to shoot, but not if they get into a real gunfight. Ever even think of training or practicing for that ? It is a pai n in the ass. I DO bitch when they need 41 rounds to take down a guy with a knife. Or shot some old Man in bed. Or when they get some Black guy in his car looking for something on the floor and tell him "Don't move" and then say "Show me your hands" and shoot him because he moved. I shit you not. Pe ople see this shit in movies and think it is easy, but me and my crowd did play around. Look at the people who play paintball. They can tell you how i t is. And those things HURT when they hit. Heaven forbid you ever get hit i n the face, but like cops, and CCW holders, and anyone who was taught how t o properly use a gun they go for the center mass.

But let's digress from that, it is only part of a much larger topic. Let's take cancer survivors. They might get on TV and say ' "______ saved me". Well that doesn't even mention how many they did not sav e.

Like the 30 year old refrigerator. You can actually say they were more reli able, but still many of them are in landfills. Did they fail or did the Wif e just get tired of the thing and make you buy a new one ?

So, when applying this logic one must consider the reason for the non-exist ence of the object.

Reply to
jurb6006

burned to the ground, because it sure wasn't due to >intelligence."

Agree. And note that every attack on this country has been successful. The only ones that weren't as far as I know are the ones thsat were sting opera tions, like the kid at that bridge, and the 1993 bomb in the garage of the WTC that was proven to be an FBI sting. They did it to get more laws passed . Why do you think people are so suspicious of the government now ? they ac tually, I believe, withold information even when they are not guilty to get us used to not getting information so that when the time comes to do somet hig we will accept their skimpy details. Why did they dump Bin Laden's body in the ocean ?

The only possible reason is they were hiding something or that they are con ditioning us not to look past the surface of any issue, accept their word f or it and go back to producing and consuming like good little sheep.

Beam me up Scotty.

Reply to
jurb6006

Loose correlation. I've seen many hard workers not get rewarded more than anyone else for their efforts. I've seen smart workers get rewarded far beyond their efforts. Moral, work smarter, not harder.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Man, you are really off your meds tonight. The dumped Bin Laden in the ocean so there would be no place for pilgrims to visit. Many consider him a martyr and they wanted to deny them a place to honor him.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

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