Bad Month for San Juan College?

NickDBrennan said:
I was contemplating going to San Juan college in one of the upcoming semesters, but now I'm not so sure....

2 Softfield takeoff accidents in 15 days from the same school? Yikes!
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Hey, I wouldn't be so quick to rule the school out of your consideration. Look at it this way: If you can fly a soft field take-off you are obviously chief instructor material.:)
 
Ed Guthrie said:
Hey, I wouldn't be so quick to rule the school out of your consideration. Look at it this way: If you can fly a soft field take-off you are obviously chief instructor material.:)
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ERAU demolishes a twin every year. A single too. Oh well.
 
bbchien said:
ERAU demolishes a twin every year. A single too. Oh well.
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Do you think that might be what it is, given enough students, accidents will happen?

I just found it interesting to see two soft field accidents within 15 days.
 
Overall, it's an excellent training program. They do primary flight training in Bonanzas, the increased complexity of which make manoevers such as soft-field takeoffs more challenging. I am sure they will revise their procedures to prevent a recurrence.

Those Bonanzas fly a lot. Very rare to operate at FMN and not have a Bonanza either ahead of or behind you.

Jon
 
NickDBrennan said:
2 Softfield takeoff accidents in 15 days from the same school? Yikes!
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Nick,

This kind of question has been interesting me lately (especially in terms of probabilities, human behavior and investing).

You have to ask yourself "in the long term, are these two events normal?" Dr. Bruce hit on that by pointing out 1 crunch per year at ERAU is normal.

Fortunately, the human brain is a great pattern-recognition machine. We can learn stuff real quick. Unfortunately, it also "recognizes" patterns when none are really there. For example, if you were flipping a coin, you'd be pretty likely to flip heads 5 or 6 times in a row, even though a fair toss will be 50/50 (over an infinite number of tosses, by the way). But you couldn't conclude from a string of 6 in a row that the coin was unfair. Likewise, 2 short field errors within 15 days doesn't necessarily mean this school is bad.

Here's a quote from Dan Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two pioneers in the field (and by coincidence, I just found this quote in an article today):
People assume that the pattern of the a large population will be replicated in all of its subsets. But clusters will occur simply through chance. After seeing a long sequence of red on the roulette wheel, people find it hard to resist the idea that black is "due" -- or else they started to wonder whether the wheel is rigged...Truly random patterns often don't appear random to us.



​
-Rich
 
I think the problem occurs when people attempt to use the statistical theory of randomness and apply to events that are born of natural or human behavior. Especially when it comes to investing, or flying for that matter. Consider the odds of the same tree being struck by lightening twice. It happens quite often. Why? Well, the natural conditions conducive to a lightening strike are enhanced where that tree is. Same thing with stock market crashes. You will hear people state that the odds of a second crash are astronimical. Well, they're not really because their influenced by forces that are not random, namely human behavior and a non random economic system. Hence, 1929, 1987 and the asian currency mini crash. My belief is that when it comes to the by-product of human behavior there simply is no such thing as random, it's an empy concept.
"Likewise, 2 short field errors within 15 days doesn't necessarily mean this school is bad."
No, but you may conclude that there is some type of error in the schools training program that is making soft field accidents more likely and a conclusion of "the school is bad" is not necessarily inaccurate.


rpadula said:
Nick,

This kind of question has been interesting me lately (especially in terms of probabilities, human behavior and investing).

You have to ask yourself "in the long term, are these two events normal?" Dr. Bruce hit on that by pointing out 1 crunch per year at ERAU is normal.

Fortunately, the human brain is a great pattern-recognition machine. We can learn stuff real quick. Unfortunately, it also "recognizes" patterns when none are really there. For example, if you were flipping a coin, you'd be pretty likely to flip heads 5 or 6 times in a row, even though a fair toss will be 50/50 (over an infinite number of tosses, by the way). But you couldn't conclude from a string of 6 in a row that the coin was unfair. Likewise, 2 short field errors within 15 days doesn't necessarily mean this school is bad.



Here's a quote from Dan Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two pioneers in the field (and by coincidence, I just found this quote in an article today):
People assume that the pattern of the a large population will be replicated in all of its subsets. But clusters will occur simply through chance. After seeing a long sequence of red on the roulette wheel, people find it hard to resist the idea that black is "due" -- or else they started to wonder whether the wheel is rigged...Truly random patterns often don't appear random to us.





​
-Rich
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