#ThinkfullyHabit: Don't miss out
A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man thanks the bartender and walks out. Why did the man thank the bartender?
Some challenges require us to work harder to make sense of them; especially if the way forward isn’t straight. They compel us to ask new questions, to work out what information is missing.
“We favour the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.”
WHY?
During World War II, the US Navy analysed its planes to see where they were being shot at most frequently, so they could reinforce and strengthen their aircraft in the most crucial places. Too much armour made the planes too heavy so they needed to carefully concentrate it in the right places. They worked out that the parts of the plane that needed more armour were on the wingtips, the central body and the elevators because this was where the planes were taking most bullets.
However, statistician Abraham Wald, disagreed. In complete contrast, he thought they should armour those places not being hit - the nose area, engines, and mid-body. It appeared counter-intuitive because this was not where the planes were getting shot. Nonetheless, Wald realised what others did not – he realised they were missing crucial information. The planes that were hit in other places outside of the wingtips, central body and elevators were those that went down and didn’t get back. Therefore, the armour should go where the bullet holes were not. While the Navy thought it had analysed where aircraft were suffering the most damage, what they’d really analysed was where the planes could suffer the most damage without catastrophic failure. The sample of planes they used only took into account the surviving, not the shot down planes.
This acts as a good reminder of how important it is to work out what information is missing. It’s only when we work out where the gaps are that we can more fully interpret, explain or solve the situation in front of us. Without asking, "What's missing?", we may get to the wrong interpretation or get stuck not knowing how to interpret what we are faced with.
What about the bartender and the man? We resolve this story when we realise we are missing information which explains what's going on. The man had hiccups and was hoping to cure it with a glass of water. The bartender realised and decided to scare the man as a cure. It worked. Realising he no longer had the hiccups, the man thanked the bartender and left.
REFERENCES:
https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-be-wrong-by-jordan-ellenberg-664e708cfc3d