how a statistical formula won WW2

[Triple Zero]

Ok, well, not really, that's the sensational headline of the article, but the story is true and it did play a significant role.

Also, I'm pretty sure I heard this story somewhere before (either in one of the Feynmann books or in Cryptonomicon), so it may be old hat to some of you. Regardless, it's pretty cool so if you don't know it, read on

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jul/20/secondworldwar.tvandradio

[Requia ☣]

I don't really get how they came to that formula.

[Reginald Ret]

Mucking about untill the formula gave similar results to observed data.
When you have tons of data fitting a curve to that isn't that hard.
I'd be interested to see their raw data.

[Triple Zero]

I don't really get how they came to that formula.

It's based on the maximum likelihood estimator for n when sampling over a uniform distribution [1, n]. I learned it in statistics class, forgot how to prove it, but it wasn't that complicated.