In , a junior researcher named Gilbert Daniels was assigned to Wright Air Force Base with a problem that was killing people. The Air Force had a high rate of pilots losing control of their aircraft. After blaming the pilots and the instructors and the weather, the military finally looked at the stickpits.
They had been designed for the “Average Man,” a statistical ghost created in from the measurements of thousands of soldiers. Daniels decided to test how many actual pilots fit that average. He measured 4,063 men across ten physical dimensions: height, chest circumference, sleeve length, and others.
Out of four thousand pilots, not a single one possessed the “average” dimensions across all ten categories.
He expected most would fall into the average range on at least a few traits. He was wrong. Out of 4,063 pilots, exactly zero fit the average in all ten dimensions. Not one. By designing a stickpit for everyone, they had designed a stickpit for nobody. The “Average Man” was a fiction that forced real men to fly in cramped, dangerous positions that eventually led to a crash.
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The Statistical Ghost of Modern Software
The software industry is currently obsessed with its own version of the Average Man.