Half full or half empty?

Do you feel like every flight you get on is packed? Blame the “inspection paradox”.

On a full flight, a lot of people experience the flight being full. However on a quiet flight, logic dictates that fewer people get to enjoy that quiet.

So if you ask people whether aircraft are busy, you will have more people telling you that they were packed in, even if the average load factor tells a different story.

Want to know more? Check out this blog post by Computer Science professor Allen Downey.