References
Sources and Further Reading
The story of survivorship bias and the WWII bomber diagram is well documented. Here are the key sources and recommended materials for deeper exploration.
Primary Sources
- Wald, Abraham. "A Method of Estimating Plane Vulnerability Based on Damage of Survivors." Statistical Research Group, Columbia University, 1943. Wald's original paper that introduced the insight.
- Mangel, Marc and Francisco J. Samaniego. "Abraham Wald's Work on Aircraft Survivability." Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1984. A retrospective analysis of Wald's methodology.
Online Resources
- Survivorship bias — Wikipedia Comprehensive overview of the concept.
- Survivorship Bias Plane — Know Your Meme The origin and spread of the meme.
- Abraham Wald — Wikipedia Biography of the mathematician.
Books
- Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. A foundational book on cognitive biases, including survivorship bias.
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. Random House, 2001. Explores survivorship bias in finance and decision-making.
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, 2007. Further develops ideas about hidden evidence and silent evidence.
- Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't. Penguin Press, 2012. Discusses survivorship bias in prediction and forecasting.
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