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Jan 31 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The famous illustration of survivorship bias was not drawn by Abraham Wald (who developed the concept in WWII). It was made for Wikipedia in 2016 of a Ventura bomber, which was mostly retired when Wald wrote his report. Wald had no illustrations, just math ams.org/publicoutreach…
This is likely the first bullet-holed plane illustration of the semi-apocryphal Wald story (he apparently did tell the military to armor where there were no holes, but the story is second hand).

We just forget the earlier illustrations... for some reason.
Incidentally, Abe Wald was the statistics professor in this amazing (and true!) story right out of Good Will Hunting.
Though, admittedly, this graphic is less compelling.

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More from @emollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 28
This is a paper on how irrational beliefs persist that I think about often.

Bocconi University, like many colleges, has a superstition: if you walk between these lion statues, you won’t graduate. The paper finds 20% of students wouldn’t walk between the lions for $1,000! 1/4
But 80% of students will privately take much less 💰 & break the superstition if others do. They conform from peer pressure, not belief. If others stop acting like they believe, so will they. But the 20% of people who really believe are validated by the 80% who conform. Cycle! 2/
A relevant lesson: as true believers are enabled by others: “...policies that target false beliefs with the intention to change individual & group behavior may face substantial headwinds so long as those false beliefs are validated by the conforming behavior of the majority.” 3/4
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 26
We REALLY should be investing in better indoor air filtration; it isn't just for COVID. This paper finds a shocking 26% higher error rate for professional chess players when PM2.5 increases by just 10 μg/m3 (outdoor air in the US & Europe averages over 10 μg, Asia is much higher)
Add that to the research on how much test scores are affected by air conditioning on hot days, and it is pretty clear that good HVAC systems will often pay for themselves in schools, offices, and anywhere else thinking matters.
Here is another example of the effect of low levels of air pollution on our ability to do complex thinking. It sounds funny at first - the speeches of politicians get dumber on high pollution days - but it gets more alarming the more you think about it.
Read 5 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 24
A fact that shows human achievement: Both the hottest & coldest places in the universe have been on Earth in the last decade

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider hit 9.9 trillion Fahrenheit. And an experiment at the Bremen Drop Tower got to 38 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero
For everyone writing “but maybe alien scientists are generating hotter/colder temperatures” - hopefully! But you may also want to read this thread on a depressing resolution to the Fermi Paradox.
For everyone mad about me using Fahrenheit: fine, it was 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius. Not sure how that makes the temperature any more comprehensible, but sure.

However, it is cool that you can bike between the hottest and coldest places in the universe in about two days.
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 22
To put the scale of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs in perspective: it hit the Earth so hard that are likely bits of dinosaurs ON THE MOON!

And this paper shows that those chunks could have survived to now intact, testing it by actually shooting frozen fossils at targets.
But the asteroid likely did not wipe out an advanced dinosaur civilization... probably. (It is surprisingly hard to tell after 65 million years, even radioactive waste would decay away, and the continents themselves have shifted)
One other impact of the dinosaur-killing asteroid: it led indirectly to the Mayan Empire. Mayan cities were located within the 65M year old buried crater of that meteor because the impact changed the geology of the region, giving the area its cenote pools with rare fresh water.
Read 4 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 19
Its like a Buzzfeed quiz, but with real science: two papers show the movies and books you like can be used to accurately predict Big 5 personality traits. Take a look at the lists! (& some examples in the thread)
Movie paper: psyarxiv.com/wsdu8/download…
Books: arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pape…
Some examples:
🎥Wes Anderson movies predict high openness to experience
🎥Shrek Forever After predicts low openness to experience
🎥Corpse Bride predicts high neuroticism
🎥Studio Ghibli predicts introversion
📕Manga & Drizzt novels also predict introversion
In case you aren’t familiar with the Big Five (or OCEAN test), it is the current gold standard for personality testing, assessing you on extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, negative emotionality and openness to experience. You can take it here: projects.fivethirtyeight.com/personality-qu…
Read 6 tweets
Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Jan 19
Reminder: Watch out for the whimper, not the bang.

"Historically, civilizational collapses are boring." Most apocalypses start as Boring Apocalypses, where decaying governmental capability & social dynamism lower our ability to stop risks & threats from turning into catastrophe. Image
I tweet about this paper occasionally because we dodged true catastrophe with COVID thanks to government and industry partnerships, as well as luck that the virus isn't worse.

But it was a near-run thing, and we aren't trying hard to fix what went wrong. researchgate.net/publication/32… Image
This time, fast adaption with government support saved us, for example:
💉Vaccines developed in record times!
🚗Car companies 80,000 ventilators in three months!
💻Quick moves to remote work!
But we were also failed by many institutions. Continued decay of those is a real threat.
Read 5 tweets

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