The Missing Bullets

"The Missing Bullets – Why we focus on the survivors and ignore the dead" explains the concept of "Survivorship Bias" through its most famous origin story. During WWII, the US military wanted to reinforce their bombers. They looked at the planes that returned from battle, noted where they were riddled with bullet holes (wings, tail), and decided to put more armor there. Mathematician Abraham Wald stopped them. He argued they were looking at the wrong planes. The planes with holes in the wings came back. The planes with holes in the engines and cockpit never returned. Therefore, the armor needed to go where there were no bullet holes on the survivors. Author David Logic explores how this bias affects modern life: We study college dropouts who became billionaires (Bill Gates), ignoring the millions of dropouts who failed. "The Missing Bullets" teaches readers to look for the invisible data—the silence of the graveyard—to make smarter decisions.