Knee Jerks

Two different types of pilots, one original mistake, two very different
outcomes.

Statisitic of one.

Mr Good is =more=likely= to ...
Mr Bad is =more=likely= to ...

Good pilots sometimes have bad days. Bad pilots sometimes get lucky.

A good pilot, on a bad day, might not notice that the fuel burn is not
what was expected. It could be from simply miscalculating the number of
hours (subtracting seven from twelve and getting four), external
distractions (say, fighting turbulence the whole way, making the jiggly
needle hard to pin down), denied mental stress (recent problems at the
hotel for which this flight is a supposed antidote), or any number of
things that can cause a mistake on a bad day.

The unfortunate outcome draws attention to the possibility that the
pilot might be habitually careless. But it is not true that only the
habitually careless get bit.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
om...
Two different types of pilots, one original mistake, two very different
outcomes.

Statisitic of one.

Mr Good is =more=likely= to ...
Mr Bad is =more=likely= to ...

Good pilots sometimes have bad days. Bad pilots sometimes get lucky.

A good pilot, on a bad day, might not notice that the fuel burn is not
what was expected. It could be from simply miscalculating the number of
hours (subtracting seven from twelve and getting four), external
distractions (say, fighting turbulence the whole way, making the jiggly
needle hard to pin down), denied mental stress (recent problems at the
hotel for which this flight is a supposed antidote), or any number of
things that can cause a mistake on a bad day.

The unfortunate outcome draws attention to the possibility that the pilot
might be habitually careless. But it is not true that only the habitually
careless get bit.

If all or most of the causes of any given accident are because of a mistake
by the pilot then yes he is a bad pilot. He may have been just a bad pilot
that flight but the poor guy was a bad pilot that flight.

Your constant harping that pretty much can be summed up as "**** happens"
reminds me of the Clinton administration where the outcome didn't matter
only that they wanted to do good.

He may have been just a bad pilot
that flight...

Is he a good pilot if he makes lots of mistakes that never result in an
accident?

To me, the usefulness of the categorization "bad pilot" is predictive.
Prediction is based on a propensity to do something. Statistics of one
do not show a propensity. Although it calls attention to a pilot which
may belong to the class, it does not =put= that pilot in that class.

Your constant harping that pretty much can be summed up as "**** happens"...

That's not the point of my harping. The point is that, using statistics
of one to label somebody with a moniker that is presumed to have
predictive value is erronious, and wrong thinking leads to wrong acting.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
m...
He may have been just a bad pilot that flight...

Is he a good pilot if he makes lots of mistakes that never result in an
accident?


No he is a lucky Bad Pilot.


To me, the usefulness of the categorization "bad pilot" is predictive.
Prediction is based on a propensity to do something. Statistics of one do
not show a propensity. Although it calls attention to a pilot which may
belong to the class, it does not =put= that pilot in that class.


If you show me a pilot that regulary breaks the rules, ignores safety
concerns and does things that most of us in this forum would catagorize as
"Bad Pilot" tricks. Then that pilot is more likly to have an accident than
someone that most of us would catagorize as a "Good Pilot"

Your constant harping that pretty much can be summed up as "****
happens"...

That's not the point of my harping. The point is that, using statistics
of one to label somebody with a moniker that is presumed to have
predictive value is erronious, and wrong thinking leads to wrong acting.


Entire industries are based on doing just that. I deal with workers'
compensation insurance on a daily basis so I will give you an example from
that arena.

For a given type of work let's say masonry there is a given "manual rate"
for each state. Let's say that rate is $10/$100 of payroll or 10%. If you
have two companies both open for business on the same day. A little while
after the two companies have been in business for over a year and have a
claims history and organization called the NCCI is going to assign to each
company a Experience MOD rate. This number for a company that has performed
equal to the average company in that business will get a 1.0 mod rate a
company that has done worst than the average will get a MOD of say 1.1, a
company that has done better will get a mod of say 0.9. The total premium
the company will pay for the next term is then the manual rate times the MOD
rate.

Let's say are two make believe companies have a history now and company A
had 10 injuries that cost the insurance company a total of $100,000. Company
B only had one injury but it was a big one and cost $100,000. One might
thing that when the MOD rate was calculated for these two companies that it
would be the same. Well guess what? One would be wrong. Company A with a
bunch of injuries would be considerably higher because in comparison they
are a more dangerous place to work and statistics show that there will
sooner or latter be a large accident that costs more than the little
injuries combined plus the little injuries will still be there.

Company B on the other hand doesn't have little injuries and statistics show
that it might be years if ever that they will have another big accident.

If you show me a pilot that regulary breaks the rules, ignores safety
concerns and does things that most of us in this forum would catagorize as
"Bad Pilot" tricks. Then that pilot is more likly to have an accident than
someone that most of us would catagorize as a "Good Pilot"

Right. That person would be a "Bad Pilot", even if he never bends
metal. But that's not what we're given in the posts I am disagreeing
with. We're shown a pilot who bent metal. Once. We know nothing else
about that pilot (except perhaps that the bent metal was due to a single
act of bad piloting). While this is eyebrow raising, it is not predictive.

[Experience MOD rate snipped]

That's exactly my point. You need a history of Bad Things, not just one
Bad Thing, to make a reasonable prediction. Calling someone a "bad
pilot" is making a prediction about the future, but calling something an
"act of bad piloting" is just making a statement about the past.

It's a crucial difference, and is the one I am harping on. You and I
are agreeing here.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
. ..
If you show me a pilot that regulary breaks the rules, ignores safety
concerns and does things that most of us in this forum would catagorize
as "Bad Pilot" tricks. Then that pilot is more likly to have an accident
than someone that most of us would catagorize as a "Good Pilot"

Right. That person would be a "Bad Pilot", even if he never bends metal.
But that's not what we're given in the posts I am disagreeing with. We're
shown a pilot who bent metal. Once. We know nothing else about that
pilot (except perhaps that the bent metal was due to a single act of bad
piloting). While this is eyebrow raising, it is not predictive.

[Experience MOD rate snipped]

That's exactly my point. You need a history of Bad Things, not just one
Bad Thing, to make a reasonable prediction. Calling someone a "bad pilot"
is making a prediction about the future, but calling something an "act of
bad piloting" is just making a statement about the past.

It's a crucial difference, and is the one I am harping on. You and I are
agreeing here.

Jose
--


We're getting closer the thing is history shows that doing one bad thing
does not lead to an accident it is a sum of a number of bad things. Hence
any pilot who does a number of bad things is a bad pilot.

We're getting closer the thing is history shows that doing one bad thing
does not lead to an accident it is a sum of a number of bad things. Hence
any pilot who does a number of bad things is a bad pilot.

Well, no. "Is a bad pilot" is a statement about a person which is
relatively independent of time, like "is an engineer", "is a poor judge
of character" and "is tall".

A flight, notably one with an unfortuante outcome, occurs in a
relatively tiny slice of time, like "did a calculation", "went on a
horrible date", and "bumped his head on the doorway".

It is in that sense that I count the bad piloting which led to an
unfortunate outcome as a statistic of one, even if several errors were
committed that day.

A "bad pilot" is one I would certainly not want to fly with, because I
believe that it is likely that he will engage in bad piloting. However
I would certainly fly with a "good pilot who had a bad day" because one
bad day does not make a pilot a bad pilot (although it can certainly
make him a dead pilot). I will not draw a conclusion of likelyhood
based on one bad flight, although I will look more closely at his other
flights (and my other flights for that matter) when presented with that.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.