Inside The Search For Jim Gray

An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek adds some interesting new details to the story of unprecedented grass-roots search for Jim Gray, the Turing Award-winning database guru who helped set up Microsoft Research's San Francisco lab. Gray disappeared Jan. 26 after sailing out of San Francisco Bay to scatter his mother's ashes at the Farallon Islands, 27 miles offshore. Once the Coast Guard had given up its massive search, Gray's friends rallied the tech community — including people like Google co-founder Sergey Brin — into action. 12,000 volunteers spent 3 days examining 1.6 million hi-res images of ocean gathered by a NASA pilot who flew a U2 low over the area where Gray was thought to have disappeared. But it was all for naught. As Sendmail creator Eric Allman notes, Gray was expert at 'stripping away mystery by making things simple. It's an irony to me that he should end in a mystery.'"

Comments

Collided with a Freighter, Sucked Under

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

I remember a freighter that came into Charleston harbor with a SAIL snarled in the anchor. The crew never heard or felt a thing, but the sailboat was never found. Their best guess was that the collision happened off the coast of Spain.

If Gray's boat was run over by an outgoing freighter, he would have had little time to escape. The sailboat would have been sucked under the freighter and may or may not have come to the surface after the freighter's hull and propellers got through chewing on it.

Re:Collided with a Freighter, Sucked Under

[hejog]

thats why you don't sail in shipping lanes. ever.

Re:Low Flying?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of the people who analyzed the U2 (actually ER-2) images. According to the headers, the images were obtained at 50,000 feet. Perhaps that is "low" for an ER-2. By the way, the footprint ofthe ER-2 images was small compared to the satellite images, which in turn were somewhat smaller than to the area searched by the Coast Guard

Re:Low Flying?

[Gerhardius]

The camera array on NASA's ER2 is a tad more sophisticated than simply a DSLR or two. The relatively limited and older IRIS system covers a strip approximately 40 nautical miles wide: exactly what kind of setup could accomplish this on a turboprop? I am not saying it could not be done, but it would take more than a few days of work. The possible selection of cameras on the ER-2 is listed in the first link, the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scales for civilian and military usage are 2nd and 3rd:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/AirSci /ER-2/cameras.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs_c/guide.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/niirs.htm

Re:Low Flying?

[Animats]

Convenience, basically. NASA has an old U-2 based at Ames, it has the right cameras for the job, and they have pilots who can fly a U-2.

Re:Wisdom of Crowds (of geeks)

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

If anyone's read James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds", they'd be familiar with a story in which a lost ship was located by tabulating/averaging the guesses from individuals (most with no search and rescue experience). This technique is roughly based on the idea of nature's bell-curve; collect enough guesses and the mean will be RIGHT ON.

No offense, but if your description of the technique is correct, it's based on sheer luck, not on "the idea of nature's bell-curve"...

Re:Wisdom of Crowds (of geeks)

[westlake]

If anyone's read James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds", they'd be familiar with a story in which a lost ship was located by tabulating/averaging the guesses from individuals (most with no search and rescue experience)

So, how many times has this "experiment" been replicated?

How is the problem defined and explained for the non-specialist? In a random throw of the darts, I can usually hit the bull's eye. If you make the target big enough and let me move up real close.