Saturday, January 08, 2022

[tldhyeji] Impossible Mission Force statistician

Mission Impossible 1 movie:

Kittridge: Well, for a little over two years we have been spotting serious blowback in IMF operations.  We have a penetration.

despite all of IMF's fancy counterintelligence resources (to find out what the enemy knows) -- field agents with lots of guns and explosives and disguises and gadgets -- Max's mischief was uncovered by a bean counter, a statistician, a desk jockey.  we imagine him or her poring over mission reports, applying a statistical model of "blowback" (this is difficult), and concluding that observed is statistically significantly higher than expected.

give that agent a raise.

what is the probability of malice versus incompetence?  if an IMF agent fails to make a motorcycle jump over a helicopter, was it because of incompetence, or because the enemy helicopter pilot was tipped off by a penetration to fly a little bit higher?

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