Nabil Murad on Survivorship Bias in Youth Sport
Oct 4, 2024
1 min read
Survivorship bias is the tendency to focus on survivors or success stories while ignoring those who have failed or perished.
For example, listening only to the stories of successful athletes, you might conclude that a particular training regimen guarantees success, ignoring the countless others who followed the same regimen but didn't make it.
By seeking out diverse perspectives, creating an open culture, challenging assumptions, and learning from failure, coaches can develop a more accurate and inclusive approach to coaching.
The bit about ignoring athletes who didn't make it really landed for me—I've seen one success story make a whole team copy a training method that mostly didn't work. It's the same when I look at odds at http://applepaycasinos.net: you only hear about the rare big win, never the thousands of ordinary bets. So seeking out failure stories as a coach seems like the only honest correction.