Abraham Wald's Work on Aircraft Survivability¶
Mangel, M., & Samaniego, F. J. (1984). Abraham Wald's Work on Aircraft Survivability. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(386), 259-267.
Cited by¶
9 citations across 9 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Domain-specific¶
- Monty Hall problem
- Reinforcing the engine and cockpit areas — the "missing" holes — is the standard textbook lesson, a real inference where reading the observed pattern at face value would have armoured exactly the wrong places
This sourceReconstructs Wald's method as vulnerability estimation from a survivorship-filtered sample, and records its later use to drive survivability modifications to the A-4; the 'armour where the holes are not' prescription is a later textbook compression, not something Wald's memoranda state.
Supported in partVerified against the source
- Reinforcing the engine and cockpit areas — the "missing" holes — is the standard textbook lesson, a real inference where reading the observed pattern at face value would have armoured exactly the wrong places
Mechanisms¶
- Censoring and Left-Truncation Audit
- Cohort Strength Table
- … lends false precision to something genuinely multidimensional, and — most insidiously — when early scores are quietly edited to match how a cohort eventually turned out, destroying exactly the early-signal value the table exists to preserve; scoring only cohorts that survived to be observed invites survivorship bias
This sourceAnalyzes aircraft vulnerability from damage data observed only on surviving aircraft, illustrating inference conditioned on survival.
- … lends false precision to something genuinely multidimensional, and — most insidiously — when early scores are quietly edited to match how a cohort eventually turned out, destroying exactly the early-signal value the table exists to preserve; scoring only cohorts that survived to be observed invites survivorship bias
- Exception Search
- The classic misuse is searching only the spaces you already believe are safe and then declaring victory — the survivorship trap, where the informative cases are exactly the ones that never made it into your sample.
This sourceShows the survivorship trap: the cases missing from the observed sample can contain the most decision-relevant evidence.
- The classic misuse is searching only the spaces you already believe are safe and then declaring victory — the survivorship trap, where the informative cases are exactly the ones that never made it into your sample.
- Nonrandom Sample Audit
- Practice Showcase
- A showcase only ever features winners — the failures never get a booth — so the audience systematically overweights what worked and never sees the conditions or near-misses behind it
This sourceDemonstrates survivorship bias: examining only aircraft that returned from combat systematically omits evidence carried by the aircraft that did not return.
- A showcase only ever features winners — the failures never get a booth — so the audience systematically overweights what worked and never sees the conditions or near-misses behind it
- Random Sample Audit
- Sample only the cases that passed and you commit survivorship bias
This sourceAnalyzes aircraft vulnerability from data observed only on surviving aircraft, exposing the missing information carried by losses.
- Sample only the cases that passed and you commit survivorship bias
- Rejected-Item Sampling
- Abraham Wald's wartime analysis of returning aircraft is the canonical illustration: the armor belonged where the survivors were not hit, because the planes struck there never came back.
This sourceDocuments Wald's wartime analysis of aircraft vulnerability using damage data from surviving, returning aircraft.
- Abraham Wald's wartime analysis of returning aircraft is the canonical illustration: the armor belonged where the survivors were not hit, because the planes struck there never came back.
- Variant Lineage Log
- Logging only survivors bakes in survivorship bias — the record cannot explain what selection removed, because what selection removed is exactly what is missing.
This sourceAnalyzes aircraft vulnerability using data observed only for surviving aircraft, treating the unobserved cases as missing data.
- Logging only survivors bakes in survivorship bias — the record cannot explain what selection removed, because what selection removed is exactly what is missing.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 1 of 9 citations: 1 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 1 other way.
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