Yay! Sym-Bionic Titan Showed Up On My Dash And Then I Found This Thing-a-ma-bobber! *Sigh*....

“I did it! I completed the sketchbook! Come see!”

some foxes

Rue + Colors

Survivorship Bias

I have posted about survivorship bias and how it affects your career choices: how a Hollywood actor giving the classic “follow your dreams and never give up” line is bad advice and is pure survivorship bias at work.

When I read up on the wikipedia page, I encountered an interesting story:

During WWII the US  Air Force wanted to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The Center for Naval Analyses ran a research on where bombers tend to get hit with the explicit aim of enforcing the parts of the airframe that is most likely to receive incoming fire. This is what they came up with:

So, they said: the red dots are where bombers are most likely to be hit, so put some more armor on those parts to make the bombers more resilient. That looked like a logical conclusion, until Abraham Wald - a mathematician - started asking questions: 

- how did you obtain that data? - well, we looked at every bomber returning from a raid, marked the damages on the airframe on a sheet and collected the sheets from all allied air bases over months. What you see is the result of hundreds of those sheets. - and your conclusion? - well, the red dots are where the bombers were hit. So let’s enforce those parts because they are most exposed to enemy fire.  - no. the red dots are where a bomber can take a hit and return. The bombers that took a hit to the ailerons, the engines or the cockpit never made it home. That’s why they are absent in your data. The blank spots are exactly where you have to enforce the airframe, so those bombers can return.

This is survivorship bias. You only see a subset of the outcomes. The ones that made it far enough to be visible. Look out for absence of data. Sometimes they tell a story of their own.

BTW: You can see the result of this research today. This is the exact reason the A-10 has the pilot sitting in a titanium armor bathtub and has it’s engines placed high and shielded.

OH my gosh. I adore Fantom-stein so much

Chapter 2: Pages 5 and 6

“Like moths to a flame…”

Boom, a two page update! Kind of a pivotal moment for our little warrior princess and the musical dungeon slob…

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♫Butterfly (Fish) Kisses! ♪

Still not sure what else to do to this one either :P

Companion piece to this one

Aoi Honoo is Too Real

• Accidentally close a tab? Ctrl+Shift+T reopens it. • Bananas release dopamine, eat them when you’re sad. • CTRL+SHIFT+ESC is the one handed version of CTRL+ALT+DEL • Don’t brush your teeth hard, it makes them sensitive and removes enamel. • Don’t like spiders? Put citronella oil on your walls and they will not go there. • Drink one glass of water for every alcoholic drink you have, you’ll get drunk without getting a hangover. • Get clear ice cubes by boiling water before freezing it • Heal paper cuts and immediately stop the pain with chapstick. • If you accidentally write on your dry erase board with a permanent marker, scribble over it with a dry eraser marker to remove it. • If your shoes smell, put them in the freezer overnight, it will kill the bacteria.  • Make bug bites stop itching with a banana peel. • Make a paper longer with 12-point text, but 14-point periods and commas. • Need to get around a blocked website at work? Try replacing the http:// with https:// • Never send your resume as a word file (unless asked) Instead, print it to a pdf file, it’s much cleaner and professional looking. • Pick a flavor of gum you don’t normally chew, and chew it while studying during a test. • Place a piece of bread in a container with your homemade cookies and  they will stay soft. • Put a dry towel into a dryer with wet clothes, they will dry faster. • Put toothpaste on a pimple and it will dry out. • Practise fake smiling in the mirror every day before going to work/school, you’ll genuinely start to feel happier. • Rub canola/olive oil on knives before cutting onions, you won’t cry, alternatively chew gum and you won’t either. • Short on time with a wrinkled dress shirt? Hang it up in the bathroom to steam it flat. • The night before, place things you don’t want to forget the next morning on top of your shoes. • Use hydrogen peroxide to remove blood stains from clothing. • When cleaning windows use newspapers or coffee filters instead of paper towels, they will not leave streaks. • When microwaving bread products/pizza put a glass of water in with it, it will keep your bread for going spongy. • When you move into a new place you’re renting, take pictures of any and all damage, then post them on facebook (privately if preferred) so you can use the reference date as proof you didn’t do it. • When searching plane tickets online delete your cookies prior, prices go up when you visit a site multiple times.