What is survivorship bias? It is that voice in the back of your head that tells you to emulate the popular, the successful, and the wealthy. However, it is a misinformed voice. When you use this bias you are assuming that there is a science to being successful or rich when no such thing exist. You are forgetting the millions of people who tried the exact same formula to achieve wealth and success that failed miserably. Instead you are only focusing on the very few people that achieved. The fact is that most successful people are extremely lucky. They were in the right place at the right time on the right day. Your chances of repeating their path to success are slim to none. You are much better off looking at the failures of others than their successes because you can actually learn from the mistakes of others. You can learn very little from people who have already made it because you will never be able to repeat the exact way they became successful. A great example of survivorship bias was displayed during World War II when the allied forces employed a mathematician to secure planes from being shot down by enemy forces. In order to accomplish this, they showed the mathematician the planes that had survived, to which he responded, "you are suffering from survivorship bias; if we want to learn how best to secure the planes from being shot down, we must analyze the planes that were already shot down, not the ones that made it after being shot."