Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Patrick Blackett, one of the pioneers of Operations Research developed and applied his skills during World War II. Here's a piece from Wikipedia:
In another piece of work Blackett's team analysed a report of a survey carried out by RAF Bomber Command. For the survey Bomber Command inspected all bombers returning from bombing raids over Germany over a particular period. All damage inflicted by German air defences was noted and the recommendation was given that armour be added in the most heavily damaged areas. Blackett's team instead made the surprising recommendation that the armour be placed in the areas which were completely untouched by damage, according to the survey. They reasoned that the survey was biased, since it only included aircraft that successfully came back from Germany. The untouched areas were probably vital areas, which if hit would result in the loss of the aircraft.That's not exactly OR, but it's brilliant.