From the course: Universal Principles of Design

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Selection bias

Selection bias

From the course: Universal Principles of Design

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Selection bias

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- Hi, I'm William Lidwell and this is Universal Principles of Design. In this movie, Selection Bias. How the dots we collect influence the dots we connect. During World War II, a statistician by the name of Abraham Wald was tasked to research how allied bombers were being felled by enemy fire. The idea was that by identifying areas of vulnerability in the bombers, we would know where to add armor, increasing the survivability of bombers on future missions. So Wald beautifully collected data based on bomber damage and then rendered the results of his analysis on a diagram of an aircraft that looks something like this. The red dots represent bulletholes and flak damage. Looking at his data, where would you add the armor? If you're like most people, the answer seems obvious. You add the armor where the damage is. Where the red dots are. But remember, Walt's data were based on aircraft that had survived. That had successfully made it back. The data did not include the bombers that were…

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