Abraham Wald

The initial plan was to armor the parts with the holes.

Abraham Wald pointed out that the holes showed where planes could take damage and still return.

The planes hit in the engine and cockpit never came back.

So you armor the parts with no holes because that's where the fatal

Right.

But a statistician named Abraham Wald pointed out their error.

He said, you are only looking at the planes that survived.

The bullet holes you see are where a plane can take a hit and still fly home.

Reinforce the wings and the fuselage.

And a statistician named Abraham Wald looked at that and said, "No.

You've got it exactly backwards, because every plane in that data set came home." The planes that took hits to the engines are not in the hangar being measured.

They're in the channel.

Let's dig into that.

We've all heard the classic story of Abraham Wald and the World War II bombers, right?

It's a classic for a reason, but lay it out for anyone who hasn't heard it.

So the military wanted to armor their planes so fewer of them would get shot down.

And this study was done by the Allies analyst, so to speak.

But there was a Hungarian statistician named Abraham Wald that actually took a different approach and recognized that the missing data mattered more.

The planes that did not return may have been hit somewhere else rather than the holes and bullet holes that were the planes that did return.

To him, that mattered.