The Survivorship Bias Meme Explained

This meme uses the classic 'expanding brain' format to illustrate the concept of survivorship bias, a logical error where one focuses on the people or things that made it past a selection process while overlooking those that did not. The top panel shows a plane diagram with red dots representing bullet holes, a reference to the famous World War II study by Abraham Wald. While the initial instinct is to reinforce the areas with the most holes, Wald correctly identified that the planes that didn't return were likely hit in the areas that appear empty in the diagram, such as the engines and cockpit. The bottom panel humorously suggests a 'big brain' approach that misses the statistical reality of the data.