Read more about the article Survivorship Bias

Survivorship Bias

The data you don’t see is just as important as the data you do.

Survivorship bias is when you aren’t working with all of the information needed to make a complete analysis. We tend to focus on the information we have and mistakenly forget to consider the information we don’t have.

Missing Data

During WWII Hungarian mathematician Abraham Wald helped the US military determine where to add reinforcing armor on bomber planes. If you reinforce the whole plane it’s too heavy so you want to only add weight where absolutely needed. The military collected data from returning planes on where they had taken damage (from bullets, shrapnel, etc). From this they created scatter plots on plane diagrams showing where the damage tended to be. The initial military analysis was to reinforce the heaviest hit areas but Wald realized this was survivorship bias.

The military was only accounting for the planes that made it back and weren’t accounting for the planes that were shot down and never returned. The areas a plane could get shot, but still return, must not need additional armor to fly. Therefor the areas on returning planes with no damage (the cockpit, the engines, etc) must be the places needing reinforcement since the planes that never returned were probably hit in those places. The military had worked with the data they had but they forgot to account for the planes that never made it back, the data that was missing.

The Value of Failure

We tend to over-appreciate success stories and under-appreciate failures. Success stories are easy to find while failures are usually ignored or lost to time. Survivorship bias comes up frequently in think-pieces about successful people, businesses, investments, etc. The focus tends to be on the “winners” but rarely on the “losers.”

While successful people can give advice on what to do, people who failed can give advice on what not to do (which is just as valuable). Successful people giving advice is only one part of the data, it’s survivorship bias because we’re only hearing from the ones who “made it” and not the ones who didn’t. You hear how Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates successfully went from college dropouts to billionaires, but there aren’t many stories on the majority of college dropouts who don’t become billionaires.

In the Red

In the world of business we mostly hear from the businesses that are successfully still around, and not from the ones who closed. Most new businesses, around 90%, will fail but we rarely get advice from them after they do. Instead we hear inspirational stories about the very small percentage of scrappy startups that were incredibly lucky who went from operating in garages to being juggernauts, such as Amazon.

Investments are similar. Funds that are losers are only allowed to lose for so long. When an investment company closes a fund the fund ceases to exist and no longer drags down the company’s overall performance. By removing/hiding the failures you can get a false overall sense of positive performance. This also means that the funds available to invest in are either proven winners or brand new funds, never any long-time losers.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

We can see survivorship bias in architecture and anthropology. The best built and/or most appreciated buildings of the past continue to stand, while the weak or unwanted buildings are brought down. This can lead to a false sense that all buildings of the past were stronger or more beautiful than today’s, but there were plenty of weak and/or ugly buildings in the past just like today. Ancient cultures had lots of buildings that were torn down or fell down over time, but we talk about the pyramids of the world because they’re a great shape to arrange stone that won’t fall over and are still standing today (no aliens needed).

When studying ancient cultures, it’s easy to account for cultures who built permanent structures with durable materials that have survived to be studied. But cultures that utilized temporary structures, moveable structures, or buildings made from biodegradable materials are harder to document. We have to rely on other clues to understand these groups and account for them in history.

When I Was Younger

Survivorship bias can also apply to things that are more subjective. It’s easier to remember the good art than all the bad art that got thrown away. People make statements that music / TV / movies were better in some previous time period than today, but they frequently forget all of the bad music / TV / movies of that previous time period. It’s a survivorship biased rose-tinted view of the past.

Today’s music is made up of new songs, both good and bad. When playing songs from the past however radio stations / channels tend to only play the successful hit songs and skip the bad songs, adding to the survivorship bias. This means it’s easier to remember the hits songs of the past that are still played than it is to remember the songs you never wanted to listen to. Even when you’re choosing the music to listen to you tend to pick the songs you want to hear and skip all of the songs you don’t. Sure Nirvana’s generational anthem Smells Like Teen Spirit came out in 1991, but so did Tom Cochrane’s Life Is A Highway (a song which is straight-up trash).

In analyzing a situation, thinking about the secrets of success, or flashing-back to a past that never really existed, remember to factor in all of the data you are forgetting.

Read more about the article Typhoid Mary

Typhoid Mary

How one asymptomatic woman spread typhoid to dozens of people and raised a host of bioethical questions.

Mary Mallon was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone in Ireland in 1869. She emigrated to New York City when she was 15 and worked her way up through the servant ranks to the highly respectable position of cook. Over the years she ran the kitchens & cooked for various families around the city. In the summer of 1906 she was the cook for the Warren family (Charles Warren, banker to the Vanderbilts) as they vacationed in a rental house in the very upscale Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Over the course of that summer, 6 members of the household got sick with typhoid. No one else in Oyster Bay contracted the disease, a disease typically associated with the poor. Concerned for the reputation of the rental house, the owner knew the source of the typhoid had to be found or it would be difficult to ever rent the house again. George Soper, a freelance civil engineer, was hired to find the source of the typhoid and he traced it back to the Warren family’s former cook, Mary Mallon.

Tenement housing in New York provided ideal conditions for the spread of diseases including typhoid.

Typhoid

Typhoid fever is a form of salmonella (a bacteria) that can spread through tainted water or food that has come into contact with fecal matter. You find it in places with poor hygiene and poor sanitation, which is why it’s generally associated with the poor.

New York City in the early 20th century was a much dirtier place than today. The population of the city was doubling every decade. The tenement housing of Manhattan’s Lower East Side was an overcrowded jungle of people and it was common for a family of 10 to live in a 325 square foot apartment. Add to the mix the 150,000 – 200,000 horses of the city, each of which created about 25 pounds of manure a day and it all led to filthy conditions that were ideal for typhoid and other bacterial diseases.

Mary, seen in the first bed, during her first quarantine at North Brother Island.

Forced Quarantine

Soper tracked down Mary and he documented a trail of typhoid in her wake. Over 10 years Mary worked for 8 different New York families, 6 of those families contracted typhoid and 1 person died. Despite this evidence Mary was adamant that she never had typhoid and she never felt sick. She was partially right.

It turned out that she was a “healthy carrier” of typhoid, someone who had the disease but never really felt sick. She was asymptomatic and went about her life unaware that she even had the disease, let alone that she was spreading it to other people (not unlike asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19).

Eventually she was forced against her will into quarantine by the New York City Health Department. In 1907 she was sent to North Brother Island in the East River which was being used as a quarantine center for people sick with infectious diseases. She remained there for 3 years, during which time her story of forced quarantine made it into the papers where she was dubbed “Typhoid Mary”.

In 1910 she was released from quarantine on the condition that she never work as a cook again since she had most likely transmitted typhoid through the food she prepared. She kept to this agreement for a while, working as a laundress, but eventually she disappeared from public health officials and started work as a cook again under assumed names. The pay and working conditions of a laundress were far below that of a cook for a wealthy family. She was eventually caught working at Sloane Hospital for Women where an outbreak of typhoid infected 25 people killing 2. She was sent back to North Brother Island where she lived until she died in 1938 at the age of 69 (still carrying typhoid).

Typhoid Mary

Mary Mallon’s legacy is one of bioethical questions. In the early 20th century the science of communicable diseases was in its infancy and Mary’s suspicion of the New York Health Department was not unusual. She felt fine, so how could she be carrying/spreading a deadly disease?

Her quarantining raises ethical questions of how far the government should go to protect the general public. When weighing an individual’s civil liberties against the health of the public which is greater? Despite never being convicted of a crime she was imprisoned on North Brother Island for the safety of the public. Was it more ethical to quarantine her the first time or the second time, or at all? Knowing that other people were also asymptomatic carriers of typhoid why was she kept in isolation for nearly 30 years while others walked free? As a healthy carrier she was an unlucky victim of a disease, but she also chose to go back to cooking which she knew might endanger lives. The questions raised by Typhoid Mary are still relevant today.

Added item: There is a good hour-long documentary by PBS, The Most Dangerous Woman in America, on the story of Mary Mallon. You can also find a bootleg copy of the documentary on YouTube:

Read more about the article the Vulcan Salute

the Vulcan Salute

Leonard Nimoy got the Vulcan hand sign from a Jewish blessing.

For a 1967 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series Leonard Nimoy’s Vulcan character Spock was to, for the first time in the series, appear with other Vulcans. He decided Vulcans would have their own greeting that isn’t a human handshake or bow. Nimoy thought back to his childhood and remembered an Orthodox religious service he attended. The Jewish Kohanim performed a blessing where they brought their hands together, thumb to thumb, and parted their fingers between their middle and ring fingers (forming two Vs). This hand sign forms the Hebrew letter Shin which is the first letter of “Shaddai”, one of the names of God.

Nimoy took this two-handed blessing and turned it into the one-handed Vulcan salute. This gesture is often accompanied by one of the most famous phrases from Star Trek, “Live long and prosper.” When the “Amok Time” episode aired the hand sign instantly became famous. People would make the sign to Nimoy everywhere he went. Many people thought it was just a fun variation on the peace sign but unbeknownst to them they were (in a way) actually blessing one another.

On the history of the Vulcan salute
Read more about the article Animal Names vs Meat Names

Animal Names vs Meat Names

In English we have different names for animals vs those same animals as food because of the Norman conquest of England in 1066 CE.

From the 5th century until the 11th century England was ruled by the Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons were descendant of Germanic tribes which is why, if we look along the language family tree, we can see that English is related to a host of Germanic languages. The early English language of the Anglo-Saxons took a turn however in 1066 CE when the Normans invaded and conquered the country.

The Normans were a French speaking people from Normandy, the northwestern area of France. After crossing the channel and conquering England, they became the ruling class. This led to a tri-lingual system where:

  • Latin was the language of the Church
  • Anglo-Saxon English was the language of the common people
  • Norman French was the language of the nobility, courts, and government administration
A portion of the Bayeux Tapestry documenting the Anglo-Saxon defeat to the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 CE.

What’s For Dinner?

Anglo-Saxons became the working-class hunters and farmers of England and, as they were the ones tending to the animals, they called the animals by their English names. The Norman rulers however more frequently encountered these animals when they were served on a plate, and in this culinary context called them by their French names.

Over the centuries this practice of using two different names was adopted into Middle English which then evolved into our Modern English. This linguistic duality, where a living animal is called one name in English while also being called by a different French name as food, has continued through to the present.

English animal vs French meat dual names include:

  • cow vs beef
  • calf vs veal
  • pig vs pork
  • sheep vs mutton
  • deer vs venison (although originally any hunted animal was called “venison”)
  • snail vs escargot

Interestingly we use the word “chicken” for both the animal and the meat. This is likely because chicken was one of the few meats that everyone could afford and since the common people were raising and eating them, their practice of using the English language name in both contexts carried on.

Also the word for “fish” in French is “poisson” which is too close to the word “poison”. It’s thought that this linguistic similarity, and the danger if you get them confused, is why we kept the English language word for both the animal and the meat. We also tend to use species names such as “salmon” or “flounder”, avoiding “fish” and “poisson” altogether.

Added info: this English vs French origin linguistic duality is found in a host of other examples beyond food. Deadly vs morbid, job vs profession, cookie vs biscuit, smell vs odor, calling vs vocation, etc.

Belvoir Castle, whose name means “beautiful view” in French, is a Norman castle in central England. The Normans pronounced it the French way as “bell-vwah”, but the local Anglo-Saxons had difficulty saying this and called it “Beaver Castle” instead, a practice that continues to today.

Read more about the article Janus

Janus

The Roman two-faced god of transitions and the start of a new year.

Since the Romans “borrowed” large amounts Greek culture, it’s fun to find mythological traditions that are uniquely Roman. Janus is a Roman god with no Greek equivalent. He was created before the importation of the Greek pantheon and even before the foundation of Rome itself. Typically he is depicted as just a head with two faces looking in opposite directions. He’s the god of transitions, change, beginnings & endings, of doorways & gates, etc. He faces both the past and the future.

Originally spelled Ianus, since the letter “J” wasn’t added to the Western alphabet until after 1524 CE, janus meant “arched passage, doorway” in Latin. There were numerous jani (ceremonial gateways) built throughout Rome as superstitious freestanding structures for good luck and to bring about good beginnings.

The exact origin of Janus is unclear. There are theories that he was originally a sun god, as the sun would be the beginning of a new day, but this isn’t certain. What is better known is that he presided over beginnings and was invoked at the start of ceremonies. His being the gatekeeper to the gods meant you made an offering to him before reaching out to any of the other gods.

Janus in profile. Sometimes the faces are identical, but other times the one face is older & bearded while the other face is clean-shaven & younger.

Start All Over Again

Janus’s role as the god of transitions led to the month of January being named for him, as on January 1st we start not only a new day but a new month and a new year as well. The Romans believed that how something started was an indication of how it would go. An inauspicious start could prove disastrous to a new venture so it was important to make an offering to Janus.

So it became customary on January 1st to not only honor Janus, but to give gifts & well-wishes to other Romans. This could set the standard for the rest of the year. At the start of a new year it’s valuable to not just look back, but also to look forward to something new.

Read more about the article Roman Money

Roman Money

The pound, the lira, dinero, the dinar – they all come from Roman money.

Early in the Roman Empire the Romans used Greek coins as their currency, in keeping with how the Romans “borrowed” lots of Greek culture. Eventually they replaced Greek coins with bronze ingots, replaced those with lumps of bronze called aes rude (aka “rough bronze”), and finally started seriously producing bronze coins called “as” (plural, and amusingly, “asses”) around 280 BCE.

In addition to bronze coins, the Romans started to produce silver coins around 226 BCE which became the denarius (plural, “denari”). The denarius became the standard currency and was worth 10 asses. As the Roman empire spread across the world their currency went with them which formed the basis of other currencies.

Mucho Dinero

Denarius, the name of the Roman silver coin, became the basis for the word “money” in several languages.

  • Italian = denaro
  • Slovene = denar
  • Portuguese = dinheiro
  • Spanish = dinero
  • Denarius also became dinar, the name of the currency still used today in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.

Weight

The Romans called one pound of weight a libra, related to why the Zodiac symbol for Libra is a set of scales. Unfortunately the Romans had a confusing problem of semi-regularly changing their weight and coin values. To create order from centuries of changes, Charlemagne created a new system in the 780s CE where one pound (a libra) of silver equaled 20 solidi (gold coins) which equaled 240 denari.

As the Roman system spread, the word libra was translated to local languages. The local translations became the names of multiple world currencies.

  • Turkey, and formerly Italy (among others) = lira
  • France before the revolution = livre
  • In English we abbreviate 1 pound of weight as 1 lb, the “lb” coming from the word libra. As for the pound currency, the pound uses a stylized “L” which also comes from the Roman libra. This is why the pound symbol is an “L” and not a “P”.

Beyond just getting the £ symbol from the word libra, countries that used the pound system frequently also took the three-tiered Roman monetary system of libra to solidi to denari. This became the basis of the pound, shilling, pence system of money. This triple system eventually was eliminated as the decimal system of currency became the standard. The British converted to the decimal system in 1971 but only eliminated the shilling in 1991.

Added info: In the Harry Potter series the wizarding world also uses the Roman inspired three-tiered monetary system, but features galleons, sickles, and knuts instead of libra, solidi, and denari (or pounds, shillings, and pence to keep it British). In this system 1 galleon equals 17 sickles which equals 493 knuts.

Read more about the article Santa’s Reindeer

Santa’s Reindeer

Santa’s reindeer are all female and possibly on drugs.

Our primary source of information regarding Santa’s reindeer is the 1823 Clement Clarke Moore poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas). As one of the most influential cultural artifacts regarding Santa Claus, the poem tells us that Santa’s sleigh is pulled through the air by eight reindeer. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, is optionally added to the front of the team based on the Robert Lewis May 1939 story.

Who is flying the sled?

Reindeer are a species of deer and, as an Arctic and sub-Arctic animal, they are well-suited to assist Santa at the frigid North Pole (even though they are not naturally found at the pole). They graze primarily on lichen which is found a bit south of the North Pole. Their ability to see ultraviolet light, an ability shared with other deer, allow reindeer to spot food, predators, and mates more easily amongst the highly reflective snow.

Christmas greeting card from 1921 featuring Santa and his flying antlered reindeer.

In pop-culture Santa’s reindeer are almost always depicted as having antlers. Both male and female reindeer grow, shed, and regrow their antlers. Male reindeer shed their antlers around November once mating season has ended but female reindeer keep their antlers until late May (giving expecting reindeer mothers the ability to defend food sources throughout the winter). That said, castrated male reindeer will retain their antlers February or March. Therefore all of Santa’s reindeer are either females or castrated males.

As for Rudolph, who could confusingly be a female reindeer with a male name, his/her red nose could be attributed to the reindeer nasal system which contains nasoturbinal bones. This system of curled bones increases the surface area with thin tissue inside reindeer noses which helps to warm air on the way in and recapture moisture when breathing out. It may not be glowing red, but for ordinary reindeer their noses are an evolutionary feature that enable them to live in harsh winter conditions.

The Amanita muscaria, aka the Fly Agaric mushroom, is the iconic mushroom featured throughout pop culture, which is native to Northern Europe.

Magic Mushrooms

In any of the original stories of Saint Nicholas his mode of transportation would have been a horse or a donkey. The introduction of reindeer moves the story, and Santa Claus, to the frosty areas of Northern Europe/Asia. As for flying reindeer, the ability to fly is not commonly found in reindeer. One theory for this association comes from the shamanistic religions of these northern cultures.

Due to the historically migratory nature of Laplanders they did not have a regular supply of alcohol until the recent past. It would have been fairly cumbersome to move alcohol production on a regular basis, let alone the challenge of keeping the yeast alive & active in the extreme cold. So instead as a way to come closer to God, or just go out of their minds, they had Amanita muscaria (aka the Fly Agaric) hallucinogenic mushrooms.

On their own the Fly Agaric mushrooms are hallucinogenic but poisonous. To reduce the toxic poisonous effects, but still get the hallucinogenic benefit, you have to process them. Outside of just eating lichen reindeer will also sometimes eat the Fly Agaric mushroom. The people of these northern regions learned you could “process” the mushrooms through the reindeer. After the animals had eaten the mushrooms people would collect and ingest the reindeer urine to receive the psychoactive benefits of the mushrooms with less of the toxic effects. Interestingly they would also “process” the mushrooms through other humans, which has a long (and fairly disgusting) history of people drinking the urine of others to get high.

As for flying reindeer, when the reindeer are high on the mushrooms their movements are erratic (but not flying). When humans are on the mushrooms however, they have reported taking shamanistic journeys with winged reindeer transporting them to the highest branches of the World Tree. Less dramatically, sitting around high on mushrooms people may have thought their reindeer were flying before their eyes.

Read more about the article Empty Winter Gas Tanks

Empty Winter Gas Tanks

An empty gas tank allows water condensation to accumulate and potentially damage your engine.

In Winter, Keep Gas In Your Car

When warm air and cold air come into contact with one another they create condensation. This is how storms work. An “empty” gas tank contains more air than gasoline and when that air is warmer than the colder air outside, condensation can build up inside the tank and drip down to mix with the gasoline.

When water and gasoline mix, the water sinks to the bottom. Among other possible effects, if the weather is cold enough the water can freeze in the fuel line and prevent gasoline from getting to the engine. A frozen fuel line will prevent you from starting your vehicle. This is why you’re supposed to keep your gas tank full in the winter. While not a concern in warmer climates where winters are mild, this can be a considerable problem in environments that experience especially cold winters.

Winter Blend

Something that helps combat freezing temperatures is winter blend gasoline. Between summer blend and winter blend, gasoline designed for winter is cheaper but also worse for the environment. However, winter gasoline’s higher volatility allows it to ignite more easily in colder weather. So if you have frozen water in your fuel line, or it’s too cold for the engine in general, any winter blend gas able to reach the engine should at least start your vehicle more easily. Still, if you experience especially frigid winters, you should always keep gas in your tank.

Added info: In areas of extreme cold, where the temperature can regularly go to -15° C (5° F), engines can strain to start and engine fluids can become more viscous. In these regions vehicles are frequently equipped with block heaters, which are aftermarket add-ons that are plugged into an external power source to heat up the engine before starting the car. It is not uncommon in parts of Alaska and northern Canada to see cars with electrical plugs hanging out of the their grills which are attached to block heaters.

Read more about the article Charles Dickens and the Little Ice Age

Charles Dickens and the Little Ice Age

Charles Dickens spent most of his life in the “Little Ice Age” where his earliest Christmases were snowy, which influenced later pop culture.

The Little Ice Age was a several hundred year period of unusually cold weather around parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Depending on how you want to define it, the period ran from either the 1300s or 1500s to around 1850. There are various suggested causes for this cold weather, but the result was cooler summers and especially cold winters.

In England the winters could get so cold that the River Thames would freeze. Over the centuries there were 24 times when the river was solid enough to host the River Thames frost fair, a winter celebration on the frozen river complete with vendors, dancing, sports, and more. The last such festival was in 1814 during which they walked an elephant across the frozen river.

Bob Cratchit carrying Tiny Tim in a snowy London from A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

Born in 1812 in the south of England, Dickens’s family moved to London in 1815. As part of the Little Ice Age, the first 8 Christmases of Dickens’s life were snowy white Christmases. At a developmental stage in his life these white Christmases had a significant influence on Dickens’s idea of what Christmas should be. Dickens included a white Christmas in several stories, the first of which was 1836’s The Pickwick Papers and later, and most famously, in 1843’s A Christmas Carol.

The enormous popularity of A Christmas Carol, and the popularity of Dickens in general, greatly influenced our western cultural idea of what Christmas should be. It helped revive the celebration of Christmas in Britain, which had been on the decline during the Industrial Revolution. Snowy white landscapes, crackling fires, hot meals, mulled wine, mistletoe, wrapped packages, carols & merriment, it all became part of the ideal Christmas.

The 1942 movie Holiday Inn gave us the hit song White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby. The 1954 movie White Christmas (seen above) also featured Bing Crosby singing White Christmas.

Our idea of a snowy white Christmas is directly linked to the staying power of Charles Dickens and that, for a young Dickens, Christmas was always white. After the Little Ice Age ended southern England has not see many white Christmases. Today there is around a 9% probability of a white Christmas in London, but the idea of a snowy Christmas persists. The 1942 movie Holiday Inn, which gave us the hit song White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby, only furthered the Dickens idea of a snowy Christmas.

Read more about the article Comic Sans

Comic Sans

The typeface designed for children that, through misuse, has became the butt of designer jokes.

In 1994 Microsoft designer Vincent Connare was tasked with creating a new typeface for the children’s program Microsoft Bob. To appeal to kids, Connare created a typeface that mimicked the letterforms found in comic books. Thus was born, Comic Sans.

Comic Sans was widely distributed with Windows 95 as well as with every Macintosh by 1996. This meant that almost everyone who owned a computer had access to Comic Sans. People were free to use the font in anyway they saw fit. Comic Sans, the playful typeface intended for children, soon found itself being misused on everything from local government memos, to resumes, to lost pet signs, etc. It’s these kinds of misuses that made Comic Sans the butt of so many jokes and the target of so much derision. Thus began Comic Sans’ ignominious distinction as one of the worst fonts ever made.

Just a few of the ridiculous uses of Comic Sans in the wild.

Greater Accessibility

Despite people’s low opinion of it, Comic Sans has advantages over other fonts. In mimicking the handwriting style of comic book fonts the letters of Comic Sans have irregular lines. The letters aren’t perfectly straight nor do they have or perfectly even curves. These irregularities make Comic Sans a more accessible font for people with dyslexia. Numerous dyslexia associations have said that Comic Sans is the best font for dyslexics because of its “character disambiguation” and “variation in letter heights.”

Ultimately it’s easy to make fun of Comic Sans because of how people have misused it, but these jokes say more about the person who chose to use Comic Sans than the font itself. Comic Sans is a font designed for children, not for general use. Most people aren’t designers and they’re simply picking something different, something fun. But as a rule of thumb, unless you are designing for children, it’s probably best to not use Comic Sans.