11 January, 2024

When graphs are a matter of life and death

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/21/when-graphs-are-a-matter-of-life-and-death

This case study, based on real data, and devised by a pair of clever business professors, has been shown to students around the world for more than three decades. Most groups presented with the Carter Racing story look at the scattered dots on the graph and decide that the relationship between temperature and engine failure is inconclusive. Almost everyone chooses to race. Almost no one looks at that chart and asks to see the seventeen missing data points—the data from those races which did not end in engine failure.