I'm looking for study material on the mathematics of Search and Rescue.<br><br>I've found a couple of websites - one of them, www.sarinfo.bc.ca, is for a company that makes software to perform probability calculations (e.g. given the last place the missing person was seen, the type of terrain, where they were heading, weather conditions, etc. what are the most likely places to start searching? How far could they have gone? etc.) Another site that had some good information is www.islandnet.com/sarbc - it had some mathematical formulae but no info on how to use them.<br><br>For those who don't know (which is probably the majority of you) I run a Saint John Ambulance Family division in Calgary, Canada. We have a number of teenagers involved - they seem quite interested in volunteer work and community service. At least one of them wants to become a doctor, but her grades in math and science are hovering between 50 and 60 percent. My brother's a doctor, and I know there's no way she'll get into medical school if that doesn't improve. <br><br>As a professional mathematician, this causes me great pain. I want to find a way to show these kids that math is not only fun (don't snicker that way, lots of people think sleeping on the ground in subzero temperatures isn't fun either) but practical as well. As they're all quite interested in helping out the community and what our role will be if there's ever a disaster, I think this is something that might appeal to them - as long as I can understand it well enough to 'dumb it down' to high school level.<br><br>I decided to post this to the campfire forum, as it's not directly related to "survival". Any help or pointers would be appreciated.

arrdwolfe,<br><br>Check out <br><br>http://www.sarbc.org/sar2002<br><br>Regards,<br>Comanche7

??? You mean some folks don't think math is fun??? I'll ask my wife; she's a math teacher. I cannot imagine how one gets along in life without math, tho.

For several years, I have been playing mathematical & other games with my own children. I have even offered monetary rewards, the most powerful motivator known to my 12 ½ year old, all with what seems little effect to me. These are my own offspring. And I love math. The effects are only occasional & intermittent: e.g., my discussion of the decimal system with the 9-year-old. It had at least a little effect. My frequent use of the Pythagorean theorem with the then 7 & 10-year olds may have had some impact. It has many applications in bird hunting & in estimating measurements. I regularly use it in estimating range of birds. A few years ago, it established that we were in a legal hunting area. In that instance we were in one of the few good hunting areas in that region. That actually seemed to affect-- in fact, actually impress-- them. Perhaps, they were reading the faces of those around them, including at least one Olympic shotgunner. Whatever it was, at least it motivated them to some extent. And, perhaps that is as much as we should reasonably wish. Anyway, at least they were impressed with the value of mathematics & education (and maybe even the old man). <br><br>As I think about it, a lot of my own comfort with math dates back to my second year of algebra in high school. Maybe a certain facility needs to develop before math becomes fun. I also recall doing ballistics problems for extra credit in math. Somehow I doubt such fun, natural, practical applications are offered in our current school books. Anyway an inquisitive mind can still discern those applications. IIRC, some of those applications may be found in Hatcher's Notebook , a book which is about due for a rereading. I also have my old math & physics books containing the requisite formulae. Maybe its about time to review them for potentially interesting problems for the kids. When the shotgunning is really slow, it can also be interesting to compare the hypothetical pattern densities of various loads at different ranges against the size of the bird hunted to determine the theoretical number of pellet hits on a bird. Obviously the procedures are pretty basic; the fun part is trying to keep all the calculations straight in your head. <br><br>I think the key to interesting kids in math is perseverance.<br><br>Good luck!<br><br><br>John

John;<br><br>thanks for your insight. I have read a number of books on math and math teaching. One book that I though highly of is "Math Power" by Patricia Kenschaft (ISBN 0201772892), although it seems to be out of print now. She points out that all kids love to count things when they're little; somehow, the school manages to take counting (which is fun) and turn it into "math" (which most people hate). <br><br>A while ago, I arranged a "puzzles night" in my division, putting groups together and giving them math puzzles to solve. This made it a social activity, where they could brainstorm together and come up with a collective solution. I was quite surprised by how successful this was - I thought they'd get bored after solving the first problem and want to do something else, but they actually asked for more.<br><br>The biggest problem with the way math is taught in schools, IMO, is that it's turned into a boring, frustrating, solitary activity. You sit down at your desk and stay there until you come up with the correct answer. Whereas in real life, you would get up, go for coffee, talk to your co-workers, see if they had any insight into the problem - maybe a couple of you would get together and brainstorm a little bit. If my boss told me I had twenty problems to solve by 4 o'clock, and I wasn't allowed to go for a coffee break or discuss them with my colleagues, I'd laugh in his face. Yet that's how we expect kids to learn math. It's insane, IMO.<br><br>Like you, I can trace my love of math back to my second year in high school, or possibly my last year of junior high. I was fortunate enough to have a really good math teacher that year, who for whatever reason or through whatever brand of sorcery made me realize that math was something I was actually good at. I had always enjoyed doing puzzles before that, it was probably in high school that I came to the realization that those puzzles were actually math problems (in a flimsy disguise :-)

Comanche:<br><br>Actually, I had already found that site - in fact, it was the site that first opened my eyes to the possibility of using SAR as a math teaching incentive. Unfortunately, the math formulae they give didn't come with much explanation - not even a definition of what the terms mean, which makes it hard to understand their application.<br><br>However, once you pointed me back to the site, it occurred to me that by adding those terms - POA, POD, and POS (which doesn't mean what I thought it meant ;-) - to my Google search, I might be more successful. It led me to another page on that site, which somehow doesn't seem to be accessible by a direct link from their home page - http://www.sarbc.org/probabil.html<br>which is a fairly high level paper on "Search Probability Theory". At least it gives me some more detailed papers to read and some idea on how I might develop a series of math problems, possibly an entire desktop exercise (where the cadets would get to play the roles of the emergency SAR co-ordinators, trying to calculate the best areas to search).

Aard,<br><br>As I think further about it, my enjoyment of math really stems from 2 years of exceptionally talented and concientious teaching. That teacher truly helped me to learn how to think and reason logically & methodically. I suppose diligent teaching may often not show the full extent of the benefits until long after the course of study has ended. Hence the need for the diligence in teaching.<br><br>John

Ooh! A fellow math geek. I'm in heaven ;-)<br><br>Here's a draft of the scenario I plan to present to the division, FYI:<br><br>Scenario: A 6-year old boy, Jay Walker, has been reported missing by his family from a campsite. He was last seen 6 hours ago playing near the campsite. Temperature is currently a few degrees above freezing. Expected to reach 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) around midnight tonight, temperature will continue to fall throughout the day tomorrow. Snow starting early tomorrow morning, expected to continue for the next three days.<br><br>So far, there have been four reported sightings of a boy matching Jay's description; unfortunately, they are in widely separated areas. However, we will begin by concentrating our search in these areas. (Subsequent exercises, if this one proves popular, may have fewer initial "clues", as they gain more experience.)<br><br>Assignment 1: Calculate the POA (probability of Jay being in each of the four areas), based on a) terrain (good way to work some map-reading in), and b) speed of walking (probably a simple formula, 3 mph uphill, 5 mph on the flat, 7 mph downhill.<br><br>Assignment 2: You have 4 experienced searchers and about 100 untrained volunteers. Develop a search strategy. Be prepared to explain to Jay's parents why you chose that strategy. (Actually, for the first exercise, I think maybe I'll propose two or more different strategies and ask them to decide which ones have the best chance of locating Jay.)<br><br>I figure if I split the cadets up into groups of 4 or 5 and treat each group as though they were co-ordinating the search efforts, they should soon get into the spirit of the thing. Needs a little more work to flesh out the details, but what do you think so far?

Aard,<br><br>Alas, I think you honor me undeservedly: I fear I have more the interest than the aptitude. Were it otherwise, I would probably be eking out an honest living as an engineer.<br><br>But in any case, I think you have laid out a good scenerio. I'm anxious to see how you work it out.<br><br>John

There's no such thing as making an honest living as an engineer ;-)<br><br>I'm not allowed to call myself an engineer, you see - the Alberta Professional Engineers union won't allow anyone to use the word "engineer" in their title unless they are a P.Eng. I did once look into becoming a P.Eng. but if you don't have an actual Engineering degree - a Master's in mathematics doesn't cut it, apparently - you have to write more than 20 exams, at over $100 a pop, in order to "challenge" the qualification. A bit much, to let me use a word that's been in the dictionary at least since Shakespeare's day (and that they swiped from the army, anyway :-)<br><br>But I digress. I'm going to work more on the details this weekend and spring it on our cadets a week from Tuesday. (I won't tell them anything about math - I'll bill it as "Introductory Search and Rescue Techniques". With any luck, by the time they figure out it's math, they'll be having too much fun to care ;-)