Lesson 5
Survivorship Bias
Ask who didn’t make it into the sample before you credit what the survivors have in common, from old freezers to fund league tables.
Builds on
They don’t make them like they used to
Your parents’ 1970s chest freezer still hums away in the garage. Your fridge, two years old, has just died. Your dad says what everyone says: “They built things properly back then.”
He might be right. Materials, designs and repair habits have all changed since the 1970s, and some of those changes could make modern appliances fail sooner. But before you weigh any of that, there’s a problem with the evidence itself.