{"id":1431,"date":"2011-08-23T11:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/08\/23\/german-tanks-and-drake-2-bs-we-have-the-number\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T11:25:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T01:25:39","slug":"german-tanks-and-drake-2-bs-we-have-the-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/08\/23\/german-tanks-and-drake-2-bs-we-have-the-number\/","title":{"rendered":"German Tanks and Drake 2-Bs: We Have the Number!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Hi Bill,<\/span> <\/p>\n

Finally getting back to you. I crunched the numbers…<\/span> I saw a total of 23 serial numbers reported. The important thing is that these numbers be reported somewhat randomly with no biases etc. I think this is the case, and the fact we have 23 numbers is very very good in terms of the power of this experiment.<\/span> The highest number reported was 12955. Let m = 12955. The number of reports was 23 so let k = 23. The equation to use (from wikipedia) is below… <\/span> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\"\\hat{N}<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

Simply applying this equation we get an estimate highest serial number of 13517. So we can estimate that between 13000 and 14000 Drake 2Bs where made. I think I remember someone mentioning that the Drake 2B serial numbers did not start at zero. This is not really a problem. You just need to know at what number they did start, then subtract that number from 13517, and that would be the number of Drake 2Bs ever manufactured. <\/p>\n

The lowest serial number reported to SolderSmoke was 2008, so you wouldn’t need to subtract more than that. <\/span> You can think of this equation intuitively (a very SolderSmoke thing to do!). Imagine what happens when we have a single observation. k = 1, so our estimate is about 2 times what our highest observation is. This makes sense because you would guess your observation is most likely to be about half way between 0 and the true top number. If k = 2, then our estimate is about 1.5 times our highest observation. If k = 3, then our estimate is about 1.333 times our highest observation…. as we observe more numbers, we are more likely to have observed the top number so as k goes to infinity, our estimate moves towards our top observed number, which it should.<\/span> <\/p>\n

I hope my explanation made sense. Anyway I highly recommend SolderSmoke listeners who want to know more, to read the wikipedia page. Its quite well written and offers a lot for people who like hard formal explanations and an intuitive description. <\/span> Keep up the good work! <\/p>\n

I love the podcast – hopefully we may catch each other one day on the bands.<\/span> <\/p>\n

73<\/span> Scott (K6AUS)<\/span> <\/span> <\/p>\n

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics”http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a>Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a>Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Bill, Finally getting back to you. I crunched the numbers… I saw a total of 23 serial numbers reported. The important thing is that these numbers be reported somewhat randomly with no biases etc. I think this is the case, and the fact we have 23 numbers is very very good in terms of … Continue reading “German Tanks and Drake 2-Bs: We Have the Number!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,282,100,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drake-2b","category-mathematics","category-old-radio","category-radio-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1431\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}