Science Memes

15710 readers

3032 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

131

it's a war out there (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

What does this mean?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

The image is a reference to this analysis done in World War II, which might seem to suggest that the planes need more armour on the wings and tail, but actually shows that these areas aren't important and that the engines and cockpit need armour if the plane is to survive to make it back to base (where the stats are correlated).

The surviving planes showed a bias in the data that leads to an incorrect conclusion, just like the surviving woody gymnosperms makes it seem like there weren't non-woody gymnosperms.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

only the woody things survive, because they're woody and thus pretty difficult to put in a salad

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

People put pine nuts in salads all the time, and rodents do as well. It's also one of the 5 ingredients of pesto.

And why the airplane?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

...what kind of pine nuts are you eating? the ones i've eaten are just seeds, not made of wood. i wouldn't want bark or wood chips in a salad, would you?

the plane is a classic example of survivor bias: only the planes that didn't get shot in critical areas returned, but at first the response was to add armor to the places that got shot the most, which is the wrong action since clearly if they got shot that much it didn't really matter for the survival of the plane.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The pine nuts are the seeds that are inside the pine cones. The pinecone being wooden clearly didn't stop us from prying them apart and eating it's content

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

yeah but you don't eat the pinecone lol, you pry it apart to get to the non-wooden bit, because basically the only things that eat wood are fungi and beavers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Survivorship bias.