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Geography Students Pretty Accurately Predicted Osama Bin Laden's Location [pdf]

26 points by milestinsley 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- j2d2j2d2 15y ago
  Quite the contrary... these people hacked information for some goal, which is EXACTLY the essence of HN.
  - socillion 15y ago
    Does +/- karma persist after a comment is deleted? It seems to be becoming common practice to delete comments that are downvoted.
    - milestinsley 15y ago
      The user who made that comment (and subsequently deleted it) was http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=anon1231213 http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=anon1231213 As you can see, their karma is -2, but there are no comments on their profile. This would suggest that karma does persist after a comment is deleted. ...unless I'm missing something.
    - kgermino 15y ago
      It persists, but by deleting the comment they can prevent more people from down-voting it. This say something stupid, wait for the down-votes to begin, then delete it cowardice pisses me off, but I guess it's not something to get upset over.
milestinsley 15y ago
Here's the write up in Science Insider: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/geographers-had-calculated-81.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/geographer...
- fluidcruft 15y ago
  Pfft. I could have predicted with 100% accuracy that OBL was on Earth. How specific that prediction is, is a different matter entirely.
desigooner 15y ago
Am I missing something here? Their theory predicts Parachinar as the city of hiding where as he was captured in Abottabad. Parachinar is at the border of Afghanistan - Pakistan, closer to Peshawar and Abottabad is closer to Kashmir & Islamabad. Edit: w.r.t. the 270km radius, 270 km is a big distance for the region. It doesn't seem that big within the context of USA but for the region of Afghanistan/Pakistan, you're quite spread out within that distance and amongst a significant population with similar buildings in cities/towns of the region.
makmanalp 15y ago
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&q=abbottabad+pakistan&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Abbott%C4%81bad,+Abbottabad,+Khyber+Pakhtunkhwa,+Pakistan&gl=us&ll=34.145446,73.221688&spn=0.033528,0.065875&z=15 http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&q=ab... Some 400 km off. I don't know if I can call that a good result. What was anyone supposed to do with this info? Invade Pakistan and run around searching in a 1000km radius? I don't think so. This reminds me of the "how many piano tuners are there in x" sort of questions. The result can be surprisingly accurate but there are so many underlying assumptions that if any one of them were wrong (which you have no way of knowing in advance) then your result is off by a large amount.
socillion 15y ago
tl;dr: > Our results based on his last know location in 2001 indicate that there is a 98% probability that he is in Kurram, Pakistan, and an 86.6% probability that he is within one of the seven FATAs. > ... The hypotheses that Osama bin Laden is: (1) located in the Kurram region of Pakistan, (2) located in the city of Parachinar, and (3) at one of the three hypothesized buildings. all 3 of those were false. Abbotatabad is in a different region, albeit being nearby geographically. The 89.9% accuracy quoted in the Science Insider article (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510513) is based on the 270km distance from last known location, as shown in figure 2, with the theory that he is most likely to stay close to that point.
- camperman 15y ago
  But as they say, "these methods are repeatable and could easily be updated with new information obtained from the US intelligence community on his last known location." If you add what we know now about Bin Laden's courier - obtained by the intelligence community but naturally kept secret until now - their methodology would have nailed it down to just a couple of buildings in Abbottabad. That's very impressive IMHO.

26 points by milestinsley 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

j2d2j2d2 15y ago
Quite the contrary... these people hacked information for some goal, which is EXACTLY the essence of HN.
- socillion 15y ago
  Does +/- karma persist after a comment is deleted? It seems to be becoming common practice to delete comments that are downvoted.
  - milestinsley 15y ago
    The user who made that comment (and subsequently deleted it) was http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=anon1231213 http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=anon1231213 As you can see, their karma is -2, but there are no comments on their profile. This would suggest that karma does persist after a comment is deleted. ...unless I'm missing something.
  - kgermino 15y ago
    It persists, but by deleting the comment they can prevent more people from down-voting it. This say something stupid, wait for the down-votes to begin, then delete it cowardice pisses me off, but I guess it's not something to get upset over.

milestinsley 15y ago

Here's the write up in Science Insider: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/geographers-had-calculated-81.html http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/geographer...

fluidcruft 15y ago
Pfft. I could have predicted with 100% accuracy that OBL was on Earth. How specific that prediction is, is a different matter entirely.

desigooner 15y ago

Am I missing something here? Their theory predicts Parachinar as the city of hiding where as he was captured in Abottabad. Parachinar is at the border of Afghanistan - Pakistan, closer to Peshawar and Abottabad is closer to Kashmir & Islamabad. Edit: w.r.t. the 270km radius, 270 km is a big distance for the region. It doesn't seem that big within the context of USA but for the region of Afghanistan/Pakistan, you're quite spread out within that distance and amongst a significant population with similar buildings in cities/towns of the region.

makmanalp 15y ago

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&q=abbottabad+pakistan&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Abbott%C4%81bad,+Abbottabad,+Khyber+Pakhtunkhwa,+Pakistan&gl=us&ll=34.145446,73.221688&spn=0.033528,0.065875&z=15 http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=safari&q=ab... Some 400 km off. I don't know if I can call that a good result. What was anyone supposed to do with this info? Invade Pakistan and run around searching in a 1000km radius? I don't think so. This reminds me of the "how many piano tuners are there in x" sort of questions. The result can be surprisingly accurate but there are so many underlying assumptions that if any one of them were wrong (which you have no way of knowing in advance) then your result is off by a large amount.

socillion 15y ago

tl;dr: > Our results based on his last know location in 2001 indicate that there is a 98% probability that he is in Kurram, Pakistan, and an 86.6% probability that he is within one of the seven FATAs. > ... The hypotheses that Osama bin Laden is: (1) located in the Kurram region of Pakistan, (2) located in the city of Parachinar, and (3) at one of the three hypothesized buildings. all 3 of those were false. Abbotatabad is in a different region, albeit being nearby geographically. The 89.9% accuracy quoted in the Science Insider article (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510513 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510513) is based on the 270km distance from last known location, as shown in figure 2, with the theory that he is most likely to stay close to that point.

camperman 15y ago
But as they say, "these methods are repeatable and could easily be updated with new information obtained from the US intelligence community on his last known location." If you add what we know now about Bin Laden's courier - obtained by the intelligence community but naturally kept secret until now - their methodology would have nailed it down to just a couple of buildings in Abbottabad. That's very impressive IMHO.