4 ms·
The German tank problem
- barking 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7278198
- johan_larson 10y agoCalculate the mean and double it seems like a decent initial estimate. In the example, that value is 80.5.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- contravariant 10y agoThat could easily result in a number smaller than the maximum value observed, which would be impossible.
- bluesign 10y agoI think with more sample size, "median" can be better choice.
- bluesign 10y agoThe trick to understand frequentist approach here is, it doesn't matter what number the tanks have other than the one with max number. 1 2 3 60 is same as 57 58 59 60 ( like it doesn't change the probability to win lottery with ticket 000001 or 639465 ) So the knowledge is only you have 4 tanks with max ID=60.
- Retric 10y agoThat's a large part of it, the other half is picking N numbers from a range 0-100% what is the reasonable minimum and maximum percentile for the largest number. Next, what happens when you keep adding new numbers to chose from over time.