Computer Scientist Attempts To Get The Police To Find His Stolen Bike Using Math

In anarticle about bicycle theft for The Times , one computer scientist outlines how he set about to convince the law to research for his stolen bike using math .

Bike theft is one of those crimes that does n’t get give a luck of police attending . In Cambridge , UK , where the computer scientist lives , the police will not investigate CCTV footage if you ca n’t trap down a accurate meter - frame for the theft .

“ The current force policy is that we will not trawl through CCTV if the time - frame exceeds more than four hours , " a spokesperson for the policesaid after one larceny in 2017 .

“ The time - frame of the larceny that occurred is 10 hour , and we just simply do not have the resource to trawl through 10 hours ’ worth of footage . ”

However , as the computer scientistpoints out , you do not necessitate to search firmly , you need to search smart . Say you had a rocky idea that your wheel was stolen sometime over the last two 24-hour interval . You do not have to sit there , fast - forwarding through the footage until you find someone cut back up like a blood line exposure bike thief walk up to your bike .

If you utilize a binary search ( or a binary chop , if you ’d like a cool name for it ) you may review the footage and find the bike thief in a fraction of that time .

Say you want to find out an detail in a grouped list of items . so as to find it using abinary search , you go to the midway point and see where in the leaning of item you are . You then go to the mid - spot in the one-half of the leaning which you now bed contains your item , and recapitulate until you bump it .

In the case of the bicyclist , what he attempted to convince the police force to do was go to the mid - point of the long CCTV footage and see if the bike was there . If it was , they should skip to three quarters of the means through the footage and check again , repeat the process until they can quite quickly find thebicycle .

According to the Times , he pointed out that " if the CCTV footage stretch back to the dawn of humanness it would probably have only taken an time of day to chance the moment of theft " .

Apparently , this did not go down well with the constabulary .

[ H / T : The Times ]