{"id":9356,"date":"2006-07-21T14:32:20","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T21:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/07\/21\/use-statistics-for-victory.html"},"modified":"2006-07-21T14:32:20","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T21:32:20","slug":"use_statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/21\/use_statistics.html","title":{"rendered":"Use Statistics … for Victory!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cool story on how the Allies used statistics, in part, to win World War II<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

By 1941-42, the allies knew that US and even British tanks had been technically superior to German Panzer tanks in combat, but they were worried about the capabilities of the new marks IV and V. More troubling, they had really very little idea of how many tanks the enemy was capable of producing in a year. Without this information, they were unsure whether any invasion of the continent on the western front could succeed.<\/p>\n

One solution was to ask intelligence to guess the number by secretly observing the output of German factories, or by trying to count tanks on the battlefield. Both the British and the Americans tried this, but they found that the estimates returned by intelligence were contradictory and unreliable. Therefore they asked statistical intelligence to see whether the accuracy of the estimates could be improved.<\/p>\n

The statisticians had one key piece of information, which was the serial numbers on captured mark V tanks. The statisticians believed that the Germans, being Germans, had logically numbered their tanks in the order in which they were produced. And this deduction turned out to be right. It was enough to enable them to make an estimate of the total number of tanks that had been produced up to any given moment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Very cool.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(via kottke<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cool story on how the Allies used statistics, in part, to win World War II. By 1941-42, the allies knew that US and even British tanks had been technically superior…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-potpourri"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":38450,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/13\/tanks-for-the-memories.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":0},"title":"Tanks for the Memories","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 13-Aug-13 6:11am","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.\"-- Dwight David Eisenhower, \u201cThe Chance for Peace,\u201d address to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington (16\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2574,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/03\/fun_and_games.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":1},"title":"Fun and Games","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Jun-02 11:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"If this were satire, it would be considered horribly racist, anti-Islam, and probably a hate crime. Instead, since it's real, it passes with nary a murmur. A British company is...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"Islamic Fun!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/is-fun6.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":131556,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/17\/tanks.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":2},"title":"Tanks!","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 17-Sep-16 10:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"Following up on the earlier BBC article, here's a bit broader look at the development of the tank, which first went into battlefield service a century ago this week [see https:\/\/youtu.be\/kLvZDRphPhQ], from the excellent web series, \"The Great War.\" View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131554,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/16\/the-tank-turns-100.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":3},"title":"The Tank turns 100","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Sep-16 5:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The first tanks were almost as dangerous to their crew as to the enemy -- but they represented the first steps in a revolution in land warfare that's still going on today. Tank at 100: Baptism of fire, fear and blood - BBC News Untried, mechanically unreliable and with raw\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1833,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/23\/the_battle.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":4},"title":"The Battle","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Apr-02 8:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Excerpts from an interview with an Islamic Jihad militant taken prisoner at Jenin. Mardawi said he and other Palestinian fighters had expected Israel to attack with planes and tanks. He...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1391,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/01\/14\/people_with_too.html","url_meta":{"origin":9356,"position":5},"title":"People with too much time on their hands …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 14-Jan-02 9:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"... not to mention petrol in their tanks. Some folks are tracing out figures on their car GPS units by driving along roads to make intentional patterns. Kind of cool,...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}