Letter to the Editor—An Optimal Strategy for a Whereabouts Search
Keith P. Tognetti · Operations Research · 1968
It is required to maximize the probability of knowing the whereabouts of an object as the result of a search. Before the search the object was equally likely to be located in one of n areas. The conditional probability of detection with a single search in an area is constant. If n searches are allowed it is shown that the optimal strategy is to partition the searches so as to miss one area.