Fallacious Analysis

Story of Abraham Wald

Abraham Wald was a Hungarian Mathematician working in the United States during WW2. He was also a part of the Statistical Research Group (SRG) that was consulted on adding additional armor to military aircrafts. Statistics collected from aircrafts damaged in WW2 are summarised in the diagram on the right. The military proposed to add more armor to the fuselage area as it had the highest bullet hole density (Red area).

However Wald disagreed, he noted that armour should be added in the places with less bullet density (White area) because those planes did not survive.