
How Statisticians Could Help Find That Missing Plane - Thrymr
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-statisticians-could-help-find-flight-370/
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dsugarman
it sounds like the strength of the bayesian model is completely dependant on
the ability of experts to provide accurate statistical guesses

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thearn4
Bayesian inference is definitely only as good as the quality of the chosen
prior, if the number of samples is low.

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ajtulloch
I don't think this is technically correct - as Bernstein-Von Mises guarantee
under certain conditions that the posterior is independent of the prior after
sufficient data is observed.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_t...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein%E2%80%93von_Mises_theorem)

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XFrequentist
It was actually "technically correct" \- he said "if the number of samples is
low".

You're correct about the general case, of course.

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ajtulloch
The previous comment was edited - the comment I replied to said something
along the lines of ' _especially_ when the number of samples are low'

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stirbot
By Submarine in the 1960's, he's referring to Dr. John Craven's methodology
for finding the USS Scorpion using Bayesian search theory. It was interesting
to read the back story in Blind Man's Bluff, although I did get the feeling it
was punched up a bit for drama.

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pash
James Surowiecki also tells the story of the search for the _Scorpion_ in his
book _The Wisdom of Crowds_ , where I first read about it.

The Wikipedia article [0] gives a basic account, and the article on Bayesian
search theory [1], in addition to describing the procedure quite well,
mentions several other searches in which the method proved successful.

0\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_(SSN-589)#Search:_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Scorpion_\(SSN-589\)#Search:_1968)

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_search_theory)

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ropman76
If this is the case, let's see it in action. There is a great deal of
information about this event that has been released to the public so I am
curious to see if the experts in this field can generate probable locations of
the aircraft and when the aircraft is found take a look and see if following
the recommendations would have found the aircraft more quickly.

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davidw
I think they need actual data - GPS coordinates, search areas, precise search
methodology and a whole slew of other hard data that, afaik, is not available
to the public.

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ape4
I would guess that the authorities already have some stats guys working on it.

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oscardelben
Last I heard they recruited a witch.

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paulgb
From the sounds of it he recruited himself. Malaysia has denied involvement.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/03/13...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/03/13/with-satellites-unsuccesful-in-plane-search-malaysian-
shaman-tries-coconuts/)

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oscardelben
Thanks for pointing that out.

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markbnj
I was thinking yesterday that there are not _that_ many jets the size of the
777 in the world, and the location of most of them can probably be detected by
U.S. military satellites. If that satellite data were correlated with data
from the airlines on the location of their planes, some much smaller set
should emerge that consists of planes whose location does not have an official
explanation.

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davidw
Commercial satellites are ok for seeing planes for that matter. It's knowing
where and when to look that's important. I don't think that even the US
military constantly monitors _vast_ tracts of empty ocean on the off chance
that a plane might crash there.

[https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=35%C2%B003%E2%80%B234%E2%80%B3N+118%C2%B009%E2%80%B206%E2%80%B3W&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=35.062179,-118.158946&spn=0.03172,0.066047&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=61.711173,135.263672&t=h&z=15)

For instance, these two maps are pretty similar in scale (I couldn't make Maps
do the exact same scale though)

[https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.14170...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=44.527843,13.227539&spn=14.141703,33.815918&t=h&z=6)

[https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.6984...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=-32.509762,80.991211&spn=16.698429,33.815918&t=h&z=6)

That's a "whole lot of nothin'".

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Create
_I don 't think that even the US military constantly monitors vast tracts of
empty ocean on the off chance that a plane might crash there._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS)

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davidw
Lines (chains, as per your article) have a "lot less area" than rectangles do,
though. In other words, it's way, way easier to answer "what has crossed this
line, at what time?" than "is there a needle in this haystack as large as
Europe?", especially when the rectangle in question is basically of zero
interest 99.9999% of the time, and you're tying up resources that could be
pointed at China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, San Marino or other more
'interesting' places.

Furthermore, as your article mentions, they decommissioned some of that
because it was too expensive and didn't serve much purpose with the end of the
cold war. Even those guys' budgets are not unlimited.

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ataggart
Pardon my ignorance, but why is San Marino in that list?

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davidw
You never know what the Sammarinesi are plotting up there on that rock! Mostly
just to see if anyone was paying attention :-)

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joshdance
Seemed like a pretty clear (if low level) explanation of Bayes theorem.

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pitnips
so, October Sky 2014?

