Errata: Built to Last
The idea: if you only look at the ones that survived, you miss the ones that were thrown away; count those too before you compare.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Sana Before you trust a result, check who was counted and who was left out from InquiryForge
- Deed Go to the original document, not a summary of a summary from NewsForge
- Danya a child of the Green Asks "how do we know?"
- Widen One number means little without something to compare it with from NewsForge
- Attest Every claim names its source, and a correction names one too from NewsForge
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are true, stretched or made up?
True
- Survivorship bias is the mistake of looking only at the things that made it through some test, and not at the ones that did not, so the survivors seem typical when they are the exceptions. Source
- In the Second World War, the statistician Abraham Wald pointed out that the bullet holes on returning planes showed where a plane could be hit and still come home; the places with no holes were where planes that did not return had been hit. Source
- In the case, 30 of 120 newer bikes were not worth mending, a quarter; 36 old bikes still riding out of 900 sold in one year is four in a hundred, and 864 of that year's bikes are gone.
Stretched
- In the case, a 1978 sales ledger is found and read in one afternoon. What we simplified: Real records of old sales are often lost, and there may be many more old bikes still riding that never come to a repair café. That uncertainty is part of the point: the ones you can see are not a fair sample.
Made up
- The repair café, its log, the bike shop and its ledger, Ollie, Mrs Kaur, Mr Daley and the Green Gazette's April feature are made up. The idea of survivorship bias is real.
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.