Reinforcements

Logic Level 1

WWII was the golden age of the dogfight, when enemies would lock their airforces in plane-to-plane aerial combat. Unsurprisingly, many planes were lost to crashes. If a bullet strikes a plane in a sensitive area, it's hard to make it back to base. For the planes that did come back, the mechanics kept track of the location of bullet holes in the fuselage, so that they could reinforce the planes in the vulnerable locations.

Suppose that for American planes, the bullet holes on returning planes were distributed as follows:

Where should the mechanics reinforce planes so that more of them come back safely?

The wing The cockpit The tail The engine

8 solutions

Beakal Tiliksew
Oct 11, 2015

The key here is: If a bullet strikes a plane in a sensitive area, it's hard to make it back to base.

The graph shows a return rate of planes with various location of bullet holes. We'd expect the location of bullet holes in WWII to be fairly even across different parts of the plane, so since an engine failure has the lowest return rate, the engine should have the highest reinforcement.

Also known as Survivor Bias

Logan Gaastra - 5 years, 7 months ago

I got this answer correct as the only information that would lead you to an answer is that reported above, but it is far from enough information to actually provide a reliable conclusion. While engine bullet holes were found on ~30x fewer returning planes than wing bullet holes, it's entirely possible that wings were hit 100x more often, meaning they would have both a higher absolute and relative risk of non-return.

Justin De Biasio - 5 years, 7 months ago

However I might say that since not a single plane has a bullet in E(Let's say the rotor), Then the answer would be E?

Ajinkya Shivashankar - 4 years, 7 months ago

María Pedrosa
Oct 13, 2015

The graph shows that the highest return rate is for planes that have bullet holes at the wings. That mean that bullets strike in wings is not a problem since they can continue flying and reach the base. On the other hand, there are few planes that get back to base with a bullet hole at the engine, that is because they can't continue flying so they crash. That shows the most sensitive area in a plane is the engine, so it needs to be reinforced.

Clement Prem
Sep 7, 2018

The chart shows almost all the planes hit in the engine didn't survive, so we need to focus on the engine.

Chris Lee
May 13, 2017

Common mistake:The wing, because most of the wings CAN come back, we don't care about them, but engine problems rarely come back. So we need to reinforce that section.

Ece Yalcin
Feb 15, 2016

The chart shows how many planes RETURNED BACK TO BASE which means looking at that the bullets that go to the engine is the most severe problem because only a few come back.

Fletcher Al Latagan
Oct 19, 2015

The problem stated that "If a bullet strikes a plane in a sensitive area, it's hard to make it back to base", which means the lesser planes which had the bullet holes in a certain area means the lesser the possibility of those planes making it back to base.

Eduardo Carnero
Oct 18, 2015

The most sensitive area is the engine, a lot of airplanes with bullet holes in wings did it to the base, but the ones with holes in the engine didn't.

Ricky Honarto
Oct 18, 2015

Actually it's simple... Without the engine, the plane could glide but not for long.. It'll lose alttitude, also air speed, causing it to stall and so, crash.. I've seen many pictures, even the plane that lose one of it's wings still managed to return to base.. therefore, the engine would be the answer.. The cockpit also need a reinforcement.. If a bullet kill the pilot, well you know what's gonna happen LOL :v

Surely engine failure does not equal death. Bullet in cockpit does. Also cost of pilot against cost of plane should sway the result back to cockpit. However what actually happened was pilots took out the reinforcement anyway in favour of performance lol

Kevin Sturge - 5 years, 6 months ago

Reinforcements

8 solutions

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