Article: Simon Maskell shares how statistics can help in the mission to find the missing MH370
The Malaysian government, with the help of the UK’s INMARSAT, was able to dramatically narrow down the search area for flight MH370, made it seem much more likely that the wreckage of the plane might be found.
Nevertheless, we’re not there yet and we need to be smart about the techniques we use in this latest stage of the operation.
It is reassuring to see Chinese, Australian and US teams all working together with a common goal but it is quite apparent that they are struggling to solve what is actually a very tough problem.
It’s tough because of the physical distances involved: the search area is some 2,000km south-east of Perth in an area of the Indian Ocean that is being described as one of the most inaccessible places on Earth.
That means planes and ships can only spend a few hours searching at a time so we need to be clever about how we deploy them. That’s where a British man called Thomas Bayes comes in. He was born in London in 1701 and developed the maths that now underpins state-of-the-art technology in retail, insurance and, crucially in this case, search and rescue.
The key idea to come out of Bayes’ thinking is that you can calculate probabilities as a way of quantifying what you believe. In the case of MH370, it’s a bit like throwing dust particles wide across the search area. Each particle represents a candidate place where the plane might be. As your search planes and ships move around the area, they hoover up the particles, eliminating candidate places that still need to be looked at.
Read how Simon and the team are applying this approach to investigate the unsovled mystery.
https://theconversation.com/how-statistics-can-help-in-the-mission-to-find-mh370-24913