How Not to Be Wrong : The Power of Mathematical Thinking

The reason planes were coming back with fewer hits to the engine is that planes that got hit in the engine weren’t coming back.

Math is a science of not being wrong about things, its techniques and habits hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. With the tools of mathematics in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, sounder, and more meaningful way.

judging a decade’s worth of mutual funds by the ones that still exist at the end of the ten years is like judging our pilots’ evasive maneuvers by counting the bullet holes in the planes that come back.