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Survivorship Bias

xkcd.com

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Re: Survivorship Bias

#41

Post by jondubois »

pipio21 wrote: post #24

Like fear, you should take Survivorship bias into account, but it should not dominate you. If you do you will do nothing in life. When I created my first company my parents told me about how hard it was going to be, how few succeed... On the contrary I found it was way easier and natural than studying engineering was, for example, and hundreds or thousands of people could do it. I found most serious people succeed in…

This comment just shows the power of the survivor bias. Face it; you're a survivor and your friends are survivors too; you're all biased. Maybe you know wealthy investors, maybe you live in the US - You cannot take this for granted; very few people have these things.

I have met several very smart people who have done great things but have not been fortunate enough to succeed financially because (for example) some well-funded, well-connected silicon valley competitor came out of nowhere and took all the market share through the sheer force of advertising. Many things can go wrong.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#42

Post by danielpatrick »

thenomad wrote: post #33
arximboldi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not that hard to become a millionaire, way easier than being a salaried person Sure. If it is not so hard, everyone would do it. If everyone was a millionaire, who would do actual unpleasant work? Who would clean, run hospitals, build infrastructure? Who would work for your startup so you can make money? Your comment is such an example of survivorship bias! Capitalism is a competition. You won, good for you.…

The "actual unpleasant work" is to a significant extent the domain of entrepreneurs. For example, cleaning companies - often started by one person doing the cleaning - are an absolutely textbook example of entrepreneurship. Some of those entrepreneurs then become millionaires :) (Updating this post: obviously a lot of unpleasant work is done by non-entrepreneurs. But the maxim of "find something necessary but unpleas…

lol. What?

Re: Survivorship Bias

#43

Post by thenomad »

ux-app wrote: post #23

Most people are missing the point a bit here. Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. There are loads of stories like that. Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" Following the playbook of those that made it into the top 0.001% is foolish and does not properly account for the large part luck pla…

I would agree. One of the things I tell students is that studying success stories is extremely valuable, but only if you do it the right way.

You're looking for two things:

1) Trends. 2) Ideas.

Not blueprints.

(On the med school survivorship bias comment: I don't know about the US medical system, but every other high-earning profession I'm aware of has a significant failure rate. Don't go to law school in the UK assuming that you'll make partner at a major firm, for example - or indeed that you'll automatically manage to land a job as a practicing lawyer.)

Re: Survivorship Bias

#44

Post by infinity0 »

hueving wrote: post #9
infinity0 wrote: post #6

What else would you do instead? More often than not I see this point abused by lazy or negative people to justify not doing anything useful. Yes there's survivorship bias, you try to adjust for that, and draw inspiration from the positive parts of the better and more realistic examples. Just because the system is rigged against you, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to achieve things. Not trying to achieve things is dec…

>What else would you do instead? Acknowledge when luck was the major reason for your success. Don't stand in front of a room of people and tell them if they weren't so damn lazy, they could have hundreds of millions of dollars as well. In other words, if luck played any major part in your success, you really have no justification in lecturing people on how to be good at something.

I think you misunderstood me. I am not "successful" in that sense. By "you" I meant us "unsuccessful" people who are the target of such "success stories". What are we supposed to do? I'd say it's waste of time to get too pissed at success stories that are affected by survivorship bias.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#45

Post by danielpatrick »

pipio21 wrote: post #24

Like fear, you should take Survivorship bias into account, but it should not dominate you. If you do you will do nothing in life. When I created my first company my parents told me about how hard it was going to be, how few succeed... On the contrary I found it was way easier and natural than studying engineering was, for example, and hundreds or thousands of people could do it. I found most serious people succeed in…

There was a comic in XKCD recently that asked everyone to preface their inspirational speeches with a disclaimer about Survivorship bias. You should read that.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#47

Post by Kurtz79 »

ux-app wrote: post #23

Most people are missing the point a bit here. Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. There are loads of stories like that. Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" Following the playbook of those that made it into the top 0.001% is foolish and does not properly account for the large part luck pla…

"There are loads of stories like that."

But I believe that's the whole point that the comic is trying to make.

Successful stories are those that are shared and those that we choose to have as validation that if we do the same we will be successful.

Stories of those that had the same conviction, but failed, are those that few like to share or even acknowledge.

Of course, there is plenty of variation on what we consider "success".

Going to college, work hard studying a marketable subject is a much lower risk/reward proposition than "funding a startup and creating the next Google".

Re: Survivorship Bias

#48

Post by leipert »

kebman wrote: post #25

Survivorship? Is that the ship that survives? I just call it survivor bias. But then, that's just me. :D

> word-forming element meaning "quality, condition; act, power, skill; office, position; relation between, [...] from Old English -sciepe" [1]

It seems like -ship is related to the German -schaft. e.g. Gemeinschaft fellowship, Gesellschaft companionship, Freundschaft friendship ...

Thanks for letting me search for it. Now I learned something on a slow friday.

[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ship

Re: Survivorship Bias

#49

Post by jacquesm »

tempodox wrote: post #11
skarap wrote: post #3

Meta: I can't believe how often xkcd nails it.

I suspect that others could nail it just as often but lack the ability to present the conclusion in a way that's both succinct and palatable. Holding the mirror up to people and surviving the act is a delicate art.

Also, that niche appears to be taken.

Re: Survivorship Bias

#50

Post by taway_1212 »

ux-app wrote: post #23

Most people are missing the point a bit here. Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr. There are loads of stories like that. Survivorship bias is "Zuck did X, Y and Z, if I do the same then I'll be a multi-billionaire too!" Following the playbook of those that made it into the top 0.001% is foolish and does not properly account for the large part luck pla…

> Survivorship bias doesn't relate to people who worked hard, improved themselves and now earn 1-10MM/yr.

I don't have the actual numbers (does anyone?), but my guess would be that universally given For example, there are millions of apps on App Store. Most of those are/were somebody's startup...

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