Have you ever wondered why the experiences we learnt from the most successful people are usually different from the reality and sometimes it even leads us to a different result? In this episode, we will talk about Survivorship Bias and how it affects your decisions.
1. Survivorship Bias – Overview, Impact, and How to Prevent. (2020, May 15). Retrieved from https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/survivorship-bias/
2. Patel, N. (2015, September 02). 90% Of Startups Fail: Here’s What You Need To Know About The 10%. Retrieved July 27, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-will-fail-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/
3. Robert J Zimmer (2013-03-01). “The Myth of the Successful College Dropout: Why It Could Make Millions of Young Americans Poorer”. The Atlantic.
4. Donohue, W. (2019, September 24). 7 Lessons on Survivorship Bias that Will Help You Make Better Decisions. Retrieved July 27, 2020, from https://blog.idonethis.com/7-lessons-survivorship-bias-will-help-make-better-decisions/
5. M., Han, L., MD, P., & Singhal, S. (2020, May 27). Major challenges remain in COVID-19 testing. Retrieved July 27, 2020, from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/major-challenges-remain-in-covid-19-testing
6. Survivorship Bias: The Tale of Forgotten Failures. (2019, December 02). Retrieved from https://fs.blog/2019/12/survivorship-bias
7. Madhavan, A. (2020, June 03). Correlation vs Causation: Understand the Difference for Your Product. Retrieved from https://amplitude.com/blog/2017/01/19/causation-correlation
8. Powell, I., Ingram, N., & Broughton, G. (2016, March 28). Survivorship bias – lessons from World War Two aircraft. Retrieved from https://clearthinking.co/survivorship-bias/
9. Vanguard. (2015, March). What is ‘survivorship bias’ and why does it matter? [Press release]. Retrieved from
10. Hayes, A. (2020, June 03). Mutual Fund Definition. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mutualfund.asp
11. https://www.vanguard.co.uk/documents/adv/literature/survivorship-bias.pdf
12. Elton; Gruber; Blake (1996). “Survivorship Bias and Mutual Fund Performance”. Review of Financial Studies. 9 (4): 1097–1120. doi:10.1093/rfs/9.4.1097. In this paper the researchers eliminate survivorship bias by following the returns on all funds extant at the end of 1976. They show that other researchers have drawn spurious conclusions by failing to include the bias in regressions on fund performance.
13. Thomas, J. (2019, April 23). Bullet Holes & Bias: The Story of Abraham Wald – mcdreeamie-musings. Retrieved from https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/1/survivorship-bias-how-lessons-from-world-war-two-affect-clinical-research-today
14. The Decision Lab. https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/optimism-bias/
