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Survival bias

November 9, 2016 By editor

This strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is the best description of survival bias I’ve come across.

It’s a pernicious problem in day-to-day decision-making. Modern, sensationalist news reporting reinforces it. Frightening, surprising. “man bites dog” stories survive. Stories about everyday dangers end up in the bin.

When I was a child, my parents would tell me to go to school through fields and woodland so I was away from traffic as I dawdled around. Nowadays parents want their children in busy public areas when alone. Unless child attackers are now more numerous than careless drivers, this isn’t good advice.

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Filed Under: Decision science Tagged With: survival bias

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