Recent Activity

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  Presidential Trivia - not for points

  What president of the United States set a National High School track and field record that still stands today?

  Posted 06 May 10

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  Three travellers (Solved)

  Sam, George, and Billie departed from Seattle heading in a Northerly direction.

  What was the name of George's girlfriend?

  Posted 05 May 10

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  Memphis Belle

  Hello to the group.  I offer a problem posed to me long ago in college by a Professor statistics:

   

  The setting is World War 2, an American bomber base in England.  Every day the base sends it's bombers to bomb Germany.  But the German anti-aircraft (flak) guns are damaging or destroying a lot of aircraft.  The base commander, Colonel Jones,  decides that he's going to come up with a method to better protect his planes from the German flak.

  From that point on, whenever a plane returns from a mission with flak damage, the commander notes the damaged area, and from this data he builds a composite chart showing the outline of an airplane, and indicating which areas of the aircraft are being hit most often.

  He presents his data to a meeting of his officers, and shows his chart that clearly shows that some areas of the planes are damaged more often than other areas.  He then proposes his solution:  adding additional armor plating to those areas of the planes that are damaged most often.

  His second in command, Major Smith, disagrees with him, saying that since anti-aircraft fire is essentially random, it's purely by chance that his chart shows some areas damaged more often than others, and it will do no good to add additional armor based on his chart.

  A third officer, Lieutenant Wilson,  says "I agree that the flak is random, but the chart clearly shows some areas being hit more often.  So maybe we should add armor to the areas that show the least damage, maybe those areas are "due" to get hit more often in the future."

   

  Which proposed solution, if any, will better protect the bombers?  What is right or wrong about each officer's thinking?

   

  Posted 02 May 10