{"id":1441,"date":"2020-05-12T15:20:40","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/?p=1441"},"modified":"2020-05-12T15:20:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T15:20:42","slug":"not-everything-that-counts-can-be-counted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/2020\/05\/12\/not-everything-that-counts-can-be-counted\/","title":{"rendered":"Not everything that counts can be counted"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span>\n<p>During World War II, numerous fighter planes were getting hit by anti-aircraft guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Air Force officers wanted to add some protective armor\/shield to the planes. The question was &#8220;where&#8221;?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The planes could only support few more kilos of weight. A group of mathematicians and engineers were called for a short consulting project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fighter planes returning from missions were analysed for bullet holes per square foot. They found 1.93 bullet holes\/sq. foot near the tail of the planes whereas only 1.11 bullet holes\/sq. foot close to the engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Air Force officers thought that since the tail portion had the greatest density of bullets, that would be the logical location for putting an anti-bullet shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.pexels.com\/photos\/3771074\/pexels-photo-3771074.jpeg?auto=compress&amp;cs=tinysrgb&amp;dpr=1&amp;w=500\" alt=\"Strict female teacher with book pointing at scribbled blackboard\"\/><figcaption>from pexels.com<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>A mathematician named Abraham Wald said exactly the opposite; more protection is needed where the bullet holes aren&#8217;t &#8211; that is -around the engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His judgement surprised everyone. He said We are counting the planes that returned from a mission. Planes with lots of bullet holes in the engine did not return at all<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember the words of Einstein-<br><strong>Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span>During World War II, numerous fighter planes were getting hit by anti-aircraft guns. Air Force officers wanted to add some protective armor\/shield to the planes.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,2],"tags":[618,572,619,59,374],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-a-smile","category-english","tag-counts","tag-english-article","tag-life-hacks","tag-maths","tag-moral-story"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1443,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chandamama.in\/story\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}