survivorship bias
Overlooking the failures
Survivorship bias is the error of drawing conclusions from successful examples while overlooking failures that didn't survive to be counted.
A study of long-lasting companies ignores the many that went bankrupt.
Advice from billionaire dropouts ignores the dropouts who stayed poor.
The bias distorts understanding by making success look more common or reproducible than it is: We see the startups that made it, not the thousands that failed—that's survivorship bias.
- dropoutsPeople who leave early
- missing dataAbsent information in datasets
Those who prevail
- survivorsThose still alive after
- success storiesAccounts of achievement
- outliersExtreme data points
- role modelsPeople others emulate
overnight success · inspirational stories · lottery winners · bestselling authors · hall of fame · rags-to-riches
Choosing only supporting examples
- logical fallacyError in reasoning
- overgeneralizationUnwarranted broad application
- anecdotal evidenceSupport from individual accounts
- hasty generalizationConclusion from insufficient evidence
Gradual reduction through loss
- censoringRemoving objectionable content
- truncationCutting something shorter
- dropoutOne who quits early
untold stories
- dropoutsPeople who leave early
- missing dataAbsent information in datasets
winners
Those who prevail
- survivorsThose still alive after
- success storiesAccounts of achievement
- outliersExtreme data points
role models · overnight success · inspirational stories · lottery winners · bestselling authors · hall of fame · rags-to-riches
cherry-picking
Choosing only supporting examples
- logical fallacyError in reasoning
- overgeneralizationUnwarranted broad application
- anecdotal evidenceSupport from individual accounts
attrition
Gradual reduction through loss
- censoringRemoving objectionable content
- truncationCutting something shorter
- dropoutOne who quits early
- behavioral economicsloss aversion, nudge, anchoring, heuristics, mental accounting
- cognitive biasesframing effect, halo effect, loss aversion, horn effect, Dunning-Kruger effect
- logical fallaciesfallacy, straw man, ad hominem, red herring, false dilemma
- mental modelsanchoring, Occam's razor, first principles, loss aversion, halo effect
- research errorsmeasurement error, sampling error, systematic error, human error, confounding variables
- judgment errorsoverconfidence, anchoring effect, gambler's fallacy
survivorship biasnegativity bias
Tendency to weight bad heavier
loss aversion · catastrophizing · worst-case thinking · learned helplessness
survivor, survivorship, survive, survival, surviving, survived, survives, bias, biased