Survivorship Bias
Drawing lessons only from the cases that made it — the successful founders, the surviving companies, the returning planes — because the failures are not around to be counted.
An everyday example
'Ten habits of billionaires' drawn from people who won, with no look at the millions who had the same habits and lost.
What it can cost you
Copying what winners did without knowing whether it caused winning; statistics that quietly drop the failures.
Warning signs
- Every example succeeded.
- The sample is the survivors.
One thing to do
Ask where the failures are in the dataset; if they are absent, the lesson is unproven.
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