Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Fooled by the Winners: How Survivor Bias Deceives Us by David Lockwood - Available

Fooled by the Winners: How Survivor Bias Deceives Us

by David Lockwood
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available
Fooled by the Winners will change the way you think about the stock market, health care, global warming, diets, lotteries, restaurants, and your siblings. It will reshape your perspective of the past and give you a clearer view of the future.
Fooled by the Winners is a book about survivor bias, the cognitive error of focusing on the winners, the successes, and the living. But in many instances, we can learn more from those who have lost, failed, or died.
After reading this book, you will understand how survivor bias is often used to deceive us. You will learn how to stop paying for financial services that promise more than they deliver, for health care that doesn't make us healthier, for diets that don't make us slimmer, and for advice books that don't offer good advice. You will also come away with a different view of our past, including our perilous evolutionary journey and how history has often been written by the winners. You will come to understand how we are fooled by the winners in warfare, such as in the deployment of nuclear weapons and the most famous example of survivor bias—the missing Allied bombers of WWII.
Previous studies of survivor bias have been inaccessible to most, housed in formula-laden statistical journals. But you won't find any math or technical jargon here. David Lockwood, a former member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, applies the concept of survivor bias to specific, real-world examples—minus the equations.
Through compelling analysis and the real-life stories, this book demonstrates the deceptive influence of survivor bias in our daily lives and on our thinking.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 9, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781626348813

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781626348813
      • File size: 7125 KB

  • Accessibility

    No publisher statement provided

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 15, 2021
      A panoramic study focuses on survivor bias, a pervasive failure of reason that deeply distorts people's views of the world. According to Lockwood, survivor bias--a "cognitive failure" that involves a myopic overemphasis on success to the relative exclusion of failure--encourages all kinds of inferential missteps. "We are misled because we focus on the winners, the successes, and the living and lose sight of those who have lost, the failures, and the dead. By failing to adjust for survivor bias, we reach the wrong conclusions," the author asserts. Psychologically, the tendency toward survivor bias results from an excess of optimism, the inclination to "attribute success to skill rather than luck," to believe in the power of expert effort over the vagaries of chance. Lockwood supplies a sweeping account of the expressions and effects of the bias, ranging from the pharmaceutical and financial industries to war. For example, drug companies routinely oversell the efficacy of their products by excluding contradictory data, just as hedge funds overstate their performances by neglecting to mention their numerous failures. Moreover, survivor bias "warps our view of the past"--this explains why the horrors committed by Hitler's Germany are so well documented in comparison to those by Mao's China. The author's account is impressively comprehensive, though the wide-ranging scope of the study doubles as a vice since he's committed to assessing an array of topics beyond his expertise. For example, his discussion of President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan is historically superficial and unconvincing. Nevertheless, Lockwood sets out to provide an accessible introduction to survivor bias, one shorn of academic jargon and instead reliant on "concrete, real-world examples," and in this he roundly succeeds. Further, he makes a compelling case for the ubiquity of the error, one that has far-reaching consequences, causing both sloppy reasoning and the opportunistic exploitation of individuals and groups. An eye-opening account of an irrational mistake with broad ramifications.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading
Check Out What's Being Checked Out Right Now