On a shipwreck, huh? That's an interesting place to find a new and effective navigational tool. The boat carrying it should, in theory, be less likely to become a shipwreck.
I wonder where else we can apply this observation?
In the use of ECC memory, maybe? Or when analyzing web analytics, perhaps: if your site traffic only shows a small percentage of mobile users, you might choose not to optimize for mobile browsers. But instead there could be a problem with the source of your observation: Just like the archaeologists who discovered this marine astrolabe aren't observing both successful and unsuccessful sailors at that time in history, you're looking at the subset which has shown up on and used your site, and who have analytics enabled. It could be that mobile users aren't showing up in your "shipwrecks" because they're quickly bouncing from your difficult-to-use site or because their search engine can see that your site isn't optimized and it doesn't recommend you to them.
> The boat carrying it should, in theory, be less likely to become a shipwreck.
Alternatively, only a few boats would have had one, and the ones that did were using them to strike out further afield than their less well-equipped contemporaries. Since they could be more confident about their location, they could venture further from land and might get caught by storms more easily.
> The boat carrying it should, in theory, be less likely to become a shipwreck.
The sea is a cruel mistress. Ships regularly get wiped out despite state-of-the-art navigation. I would suspect that the vast majority of shipwrecks throughout mankind's history has little do with navigation and everything to do with the inherent danger of the open ocean.
I wonder where else we can apply this observation?
In the use of ECC memory, maybe? Or when analyzing web analytics, perhaps: if your site traffic only shows a small percentage of mobile users, you might choose not to optimize for mobile browsers. But instead there could be a problem with the source of your observation: Just like the archaeologists who discovered this marine astrolabe aren't observing both successful and unsuccessful sailors at that time in history, you're looking at the subset which has shown up on and used your site, and who have analytics enabled. It could be that mobile users aren't showing up in your "shipwrecks" because they're quickly bouncing from your difficult-to-use site or because their search engine can see that your site isn't optimized and it doesn't recommend you to them.