Aircraft armor
Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:40 pm
In World War 2, a Hungarian Mathematician named Abraham Wald developed a counter-intuitive method for armor plate placement while studying damaged aircraft. He observed planes returning home from sorties with large holes in them, and was tasked with figuring out where to put armor plates. His crucial insight was to not put armor plates where the holes were.
The holes in the aircraft that returned represented damage that did not impact the ability of the planes to return home. In other words, he made the critical observation of the bias in the data he was observing: he was only looking at planes that survived. With this knowledge, he instructed armor to be placed in areas that were not damaged, because if these areas were hit, there would be no damage in that component in the planes that returned home.
Link
The holes in the aircraft that returned represented damage that did not impact the ability of the planes to return home. In other words, he made the critical observation of the bias in the data he was observing: he was only looking at planes that survived. With this knowledge, he instructed armor to be placed in areas that were not damaged, because if these areas were hit, there would be no damage in that component in the planes that returned home.
Link