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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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To: LindyBill who wrote (233645)1/6/2008 12:18:46 PM
From: Alan Smithee   of 793757
 
who the folks are that are placing the bets, and WHY?

Doesn't matter. These futures are right because of "the wisdom of crowds" concept. That's why the DOD tried to start one about coming Terrorist attacks.

I just finished reading "Blind Man's Bluff," a book about the history of the use of submarines for intelligence gathering in the cold war.

In 1968, a Soviet Sub sank in the Pacific. The guy assigned by the Navy to locate the sub used probability theory to locate it. He asked everyone involved to place their best bets where they thought the sub would be found, based on information available to them such as last known location, bearing of the vessel, etc. From those bets he prepared an algorithm that eventually pinpointed the location of the sub.

The men involved in locating the sub were excluded from salvage efforts. They concluded that it was impossible to salvage the entire sub, but wanted to send a deep submersible down to salvage the most significant assets - missile codes and a nuclear warhead. They were overruled and the navy commissioned a Howard Hughes company to build the Glomar Explorer. The salvage effort was largely unsuccessful - the sub broke up and sank (as predicted) during salvage operations.

What I found most interesting was the use of bets on location to come up with the actual location of the sub.
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