> Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies? No. For one, police are not statisticians. Here's a military example from W

> Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies? No. For one, police are not statisticians. Here's a military example from WWII: During World War II, the statistician Abraham Wald took survivorship bias into his calculations when considering how to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The Statistical Research Group (SRG) at Columbia University, which Wald was a part of, examined the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions and recommended adding armor to the areas that showed the least damage. This contradicted the US military's conclusion that the most-hit areas of the plane needed additional armor. Wald noted that the military only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions – ignoring any bombers that had been shot down or otherwise lost, and thus also been rendered unavailable for assessment. The bullet holes in the returning aircraft represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Therefore, Wald proposed that the Navy reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, inferring that planes hit in those areas were the ones most likely to be lost. His work is considered seminal in the then-nascent discipline of operational research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias