Best Practice

Improving teaching and learning with the Bayesian method

CPD
Matt Bromley does not know the secret to developing outstanding teaching and learning, but the story of the hunt for a lost American submarine in 1968 could hold the key. He introduces the brilliant simplicity of the Bayesian Method.

On June 5, 1968, an American submarine called the USS Scorpion was declared lost and its 99 crewman presumed dead. An immediate search was initiated but without success because – with a potential search area stretching out thousands of square miles – it was quite simply like finding a needle in a haystack. 

Accordingly, the USS Scorpion was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on June 30. 

Later that year, however, another search led by Dr John Craven – the chief scientist of the US Navy’s Special Projects Division – employed rather different methods to try and find the vessel.

Dr Craven polled a wide array of specialists in various fields for their thoughts of where the submarine might be. Their guesses were then pooled into a single average guess. 

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