{"id":4037,"date":"2024-08-10T14:31:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T18:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/?p=4037"},"modified":"2024-08-10T14:31:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T18:31:16","slug":"counting-tanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2024\/08\/10\/counting-tanks\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting Tanks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WLCwMRJBhuI\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-4035\" src=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Counting-Tanks-Fig2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"140\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Counting-Tanks-Fig2.jpg 500w, https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Counting-Tanks-Fig2-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>A great example of the application of simple math to real-world problems is provided in a recent <em>Numberphile<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WLCwMRJBhuI\">video<\/a> on YouTube by the British mathematician James Grime.<\/p>\n<p>It is taken from a real story from World War II where the British were trying to estimate the number of tanks the Germans were producing each month.\u00a0 The spies came up with an estimate of about 1500 tanks per month, whereas the mathematicians estimated the number to be closer to 250 tanks per month.\u00a0 How the mathematicians did this is explained by Grime.\u00a0 (I added an explanation of one step that whizzed by in Grime\u2019s presentation and that I didn\u2019t understand at first.)<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Counting-Tanks-240805.pdf\">Counting Tanks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great example of the application of simple math to real-world problems is provided in a recent Numberphile video on YouTube by the British mathematician James Grime. It is taken from a real story from World War II where the British were trying to estimate the number of tanks the Germans were producing each month.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[269,268,270],"class_list":["post-4037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-voices","tag-james-grime","tag-numberphile","tag-operations-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4037"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4039,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4037\/revisions\/4039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}