Cherry-picking

Survivorship bias

Plotting only the planes that made it home.

a.k.a. the missing dead

If the dataset only contains winners — funds that still exist, companies that went public, planes that returned — every trend tilts rosy. The bullet holes you can see are the ones that didn’t matter.

How to spot it

Ask what something had to survive to end up in the dataset.
Suspiciously smooth success curves for risky endeavors.

The honest version

Include the drop-outs, delistings, and wrecks — or state plainly that you can’t.

In the gallery

No exhibits charged with this — yet.

The wall is still being hung. When a chart pulls this trick, it'll be exhibited here.

Browse the gallery