Skip to main content

Part of the book series: Textbooks in mathematical sciences ((TIMS))

  • 398 Accesses

Abstract

During World War ll, Allied intelligence reports on German production of tanks and other war materials varied widely and were somewhat contradictory. Statisticians set to work on improving the estimates. In 1943 the developed a method that used the information contained in the serial number stamped on captured equipment. One particularly successful venture was the estimation of the number of Make V tanks, whose serial numbers, they discovered, were consevutive.That is, the tanks were numbered in a manner equivalent to 1,2,3,..., N.Capturing a tank was like randomly drawing a ran dom integer from this sequence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 74.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Roger W. Johnson (1994), ‘Estimating the size of a population’ Teaching Statistics,16(2).

    Google Scholar 

  2. James M. Landwehr, Jim Swift, and Ann Watkins (1987), Exploring Surveys and Information from Samples,Palo Alto, CA: Dale Seymour Publications, pp. 75-83.

    Google Scholar 

  3. R. Ruggles and H. Brodie (1947), “An empirical approach to economic intelligence in World War II,” J. American Statistical Assoc., 42:72-91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Scheaffer, R.L., Watkins, A., Gnanadesikan, M., Witmer, J.A. (1996). How Many Tanks?. In: Activity-Based Statistics. Textbooks in mathematical sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3843-8_33

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3843-8_33

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94598-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3843-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics