During World War II, fighter planes would come back from battle riddled with bullet holes.
The allies found the areas that were most commonly hitby enemy fire and sought to strengthen the most commonly damaged parts of the planes to reduce the number that was shot down.
A mathematician, Abraham Wald, pointed out that perhaps there was another way to look at the data. Perhaps the reason certain areas of the planes weren't covered in bullet holes was that planes that were shot in these areas did not return. This insight led to the armor being re-enforced on the parts of the plane where there were no bullet holes.
The story behind the data is arguably more important than the data itself. he reason behind why we are missing certain pieces of data may be more meaningful than the data we have.
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