
The German tank problem - RiderOfGiraffes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
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barking
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278198)

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bluesign
The trick to understand frequentist approach here is, it doesn't matter what
number the tanks have other than the one with max number. 1 2 3 60 is same as
57 58 59 60 ( like it doesn't change the probability to win lottery with
ticket 000001 or 639465 )

So the knowledge is only you have 4 tanks with max ID=60.

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Retric
That's a large part of it, the other half is picking N numbers from a range
0-100% what is the reasonable minimum and maximum percentile for the largest
number. Next, what happens when you keep adding new numbers to chose from over
time.

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johan_larson
Calculate the mean and double it seems like a decent initial estimate. In the
example, that value is 80.5.

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contravariant
That could easily result in a number smaller than the maximum value observed,
which would be impossible.

