What are selection bias in historical records?

Selection bias in historical records is when some stories get remembered and others are forgotten, just like when you only pick your favorite candy from a bag.

Imagine you have a big jar full of different candies: red, blue, green, and yellow. But when you take out candies to eat, you always pick the red ones because they're your favorite. After a while, someone might think the jar is mostly red candies, but that's not true! They just didn't see all the other colors.

Historical records are like that candy jar. Sometimes, people only write down or remember certain events or people, maybe the ones that were important to them or made history in a way they liked. Other stories get left out because no one thought to include them.

Think of history books as storybooks. If you only read the pages about kings and queens, you might think everyone back then was a king or queen. But there were also farmers, soldiers, and regular people, they just didn’t get their own pages in the book.

So selection bias is like having a storybook where some characters are remembered, and others are forgotten, simply because someone decided to tell only part of the whole story.