"Anon."  wrote
in message news:bobfte$6fl$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Brett Aubrey wrote:
> > "Anon."  wrote
> > in message news:bo6s1l$1tkk$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> >>Frank Reichenbacher wrote:
> > 
> >>>the difference in frequency of hits of the nail and the pin are both
> >>>near zero and you said it's not true(?). Mine is a true statement.
> >>What you wrote was:
> >>  "The difference in the frequency of hits (probably
> >>    near zero in both cases) is insignificant."
> >>And I was pointing out that the difference was not insignificant.
> > In the context of Churchill's statement ("The size of the sea is so
> > so vast..."), Frank's initial point (agreement with Churchill) was
> > correct, and his analogy was a basically valid, simple and useful
> > illustration.  Churchill was suggesting that the difference between
> > ship and convoy sizes is *effectively irrelevant* when compared
> > to the (very roughly) 6 to 8 million square mile area in which they ,
> > sailed (of a total ~12M sq. mi.).  Yes there's a difference, but it
> > "shinks in comparison almost to insignificance".
>
> No it doesn't, just because the ocean is large, the relative sizes of
> the one- and many- ship fleets don't change.  A 200m long boat
> is still twice as long as a 100m long boat no matter if it's in the
> Atlantic Ocean or the Kensington Round Pond.
>
> Indeed, the fact that the ocean is large makes the whole thing
> clearer, because if you try to hit a big boat in a small pond, it's too
easy.

Ahhh!  Finally!  Thanks for the explanation...  Now I can see your source of
confusion.  Churchill was not discussing "hitting" anything at
all!  Nor was
I and nor (I doubt) was Frank, except in his analogy.  The discussion,
rather, was around visual acquisition, not targeting once acquisition had
been made.  Anything relating to Churchill's vastness of the sea becomes
completely irrelevant once contact has been made, unless it is subsequently
lost again visually, which happened far too often for the Germans not to
complain about it.

That Churchill is talking about visual acquisition is clear in his phrase
"slipping unperceived...".  And I mentioned this in my initial response
(10/29;12:55) with "the difficulties with visual acquisition", and later
(10/29; 21:34) quoted a German Admiral to back up Churchill's claim:  "Our
biggest headache is to *find* the enemy."   There was no talk around
targeting or hitting anything *except* in the dartboard analogy.  And an
analogy it was - still a valid one, BTW; rather than a direct
apples-to-apples comparison, at least in my opinion (Frank?).

But Frank's analogy aside, Chuchill (and the German Admiral and I) were
discussing sightings or lack thereof, while you're talking about "hitting a
big boat" (presumably you mean ship) after it's been found - the two are not
even remotely the same animal (and to reiterate the reasoning behind this,
that "the size of the sea is so vast" is critical to the former, but
irrelavant to the latter).  If you still take issue with this, I look
forward to your comments.   Best regards,  Brett.

> And yes, I can throw some more formal maths at this (for those
> interested, look at the Poisson approximation to the binomial
> distribution).   What will make a difference is the way detectability
> scales with size of  fleet, but that is not the issue you were raising.
> Bob
> -- 
> Bob O'Hara
>
> Rolf Nevanlinna Institute
> P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5)
> FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
> Finland
> Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
> Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
> Fax:  +358-9-191 22 779
> WWW:  http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/
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