Wednesday, April 17, 2013

FBI Profiling... and Math

Timely….

Laura Laing of "Math For Grown Ups" re-posted today an interview she did awhile back with an FBI profiler, discussing how math enters into their work. The current post is here:

http://www.mathforgrownups.com/boston-marathon-how-fbi-profilers-use-math/

…and it links back to the earlier full interview here:

http://www.mathforgrownups.com/math-at-work-monday-mary-ellen-the-fbi-profiler/

A bit therefrom:
"I learned all of the basic math I needed to do my job while in school, but profiling itself requires a lot of analytical thinking, especially reasoning and logic. You get better at both of those over time and with experience.
Math tends to have absolute answers. It’s usually more of a black and white field. It’s about finding the one number or answer. Profiling, on the hand, requires you to live in the gray area of human behavior. This can be difficult for people who prefer to have things more absolute."
 

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