@glc Abraham Wald. One of the early successes of operations research.
Another success was the anti-aircraft guns on the Murmansk convoy ships: someone suggested to remove them as they hardly ever shot down a German plane. Research showed that that was not their function and that they were effective in protecting the ships.
@martinvermeer @glc It took me a very long time to work out that fighter pilots' "kill" scores were almost irrelevant; what actually counted was their effectiveness in disrupting the enemy aircraft's operations, not in destroying them.
@martinvermeer @glc The desire for individual heroes as a PR mechanism, much as the popularity of the Special Forces soldier, seems to me to be related to the mass, mechanised nature of warfare, and particularly modern warfare. My guess is that it becomes a major part of militaries' PR efforts as a reaction to the Crimean War and the then-new photography of the apparatus and results of war, though perhaps the American Civil War photographs had similar impact.
@SoftwareTheron @glc It's also the 'do something' fallacy. Like police effectiveness measured by the number of stops and searches, arrests, fines, etc., rather than some metric of actually keeping the community safe. And it's disastrously ineffective, anti-effective even, at achieving its purported goal. @mekkaokereke wrote about this.
sproing
in reply to Jason Gorman • • •TornadoGuard
xkcdNeil Ernst
in reply to Jason Gorman • • •TornadoGuard
xkcdGLC
in reply to Jason Gorman • • •And for those who haven't seen that: it's the main illustration at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor…
And well worth a look.
logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of the latter's lack of visibility
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Martin Vermeer FCD
in reply to GLC • • •@glc Abraham Wald. One of the early successes of operations research.
Another success was the anti-aircraft guns on the Murmansk convoy ships: someone suggested to remove them as they hardly ever shot down a German plane. Research showed that that was not their function and that they were effective in protecting the ships.
DeterioratedStucco
in reply to Martin Vermeer FCD • • •It took me a very long time to work out that fighter pilots' "kill" scores were almost irrelevant; what actually counted was their effectiveness in disrupting the enemy aircraft's operations, not in destroying them.
DeterioratedStucco
in reply to DeterioratedStucco • • •The desire for individual heroes as a PR mechanism, much as the popularity of the Special Forces soldier, seems to me to be related to the mass, mechanised nature of warfare, and particularly modern warfare.
My guess is that it becomes a major part of militaries' PR efforts as a reaction to the Crimean War and the then-new photography of the apparatus and results of war, though perhaps the American Civil War photographs had similar impact.
Martin Vermeer FCD
in reply to DeterioratedStucco • • •@SoftwareTheron @glc It's also the 'do something' fallacy. Like police effectiveness measured by the number of stops and searches, arrests, fines, etc., rather than some metric of actually keeping the community safe. And it's disastrously ineffective, anti-effective even, at achieving its purported goal. @mekkaokereke wrote about this.
hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113…
Elias Probst
in reply to Jason Gorman • • •Hypolite Petovan likes this.