“See,” says he, “you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods.”, “Ay,” says Diagoras, “I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?”. There is much less focus on the many people that may be similarly skilled and determined but fail to ever find success because of factors beyond their control or other (seemingly) random events. Survivorship bias is research that only studies the successful side of performance. The bias occurs because the “surviving” observations often tend to have survived due to their stronger-than-average resilience to difficult conditions, and leaves out other observations that have ceased to exist as a result of such conditions. [citation needed] This led army command to consider redrawing the design, until a statistician remarked that soldiers who might previously have been killed by certain shrapnel hits to the head (and therefore never showed up in a field hospital), were now surviving the same hits, and thus made it to a field hospital. This contradicted the US military's conclusions that the most-hit areas of the plane needed additional armor. Another example of a distinct mode of survivorship bias would be thinking that an incident was not as dangerous as it was because everyone you communicate with afterwards survived. Only the most (subjectively, but popularly determined) beautiful, most useful, and most structurally sound buildings survive from one generation to the next. We need this information, but it isn’t telling the whole story. In a study performed in 1987 it was reported that cats who fall from less than six stories, and are still alive, have greater injuries than cats who fall from higher than six stories. This version of the survivorship bias leads many founders to try to fit their business into a model that just isn’t right for the current market, their audience, or their growth stage. The bias occurs because the “surviving” observations often tend to have survived due to their stronger-than-average resilience to difficult conditions, and leaves out other observations that have ceased to exist as a result of such conditions. Not necessarily. During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. That’s the point of understanding survivorship bias. So, don’t assume everything is great with your customer, simply because they’re not actively sending angry emails. In 2010 in Boston, Massachusetts a trial was conducted at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) into improving patient survival following trauma. Quantum Knowledge Strategic Solutions, Inc. Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies tha… However, this is easier said than done, as some researchers may fall into the trap of survivorship bias despite their best attempts at mitigating such a risk.