Documents / Report

Defense Intelligence Reference Document An Introduction To The Statistical Drake Equation

Defense Intelligence Agency · 55 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Defense Intelligence Agency reference document, dated 11 March 2010, is one of the advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program. It introduces the Statistical Drake Equation, which replaces each factor of Frank Drake's 1961 equation with a uniform random variable to estimate how far away the nearest extraterrestrial civilization is. In the worked example, there is a 75% probability that the nearest civilization lies between 1,361 and 3,979 light years from Earth.

UNCLASSIFIED// FOK OFFI@Itllt ~&Ii SU.blf
Table 2. Summary of the Properties of the Probability Distribution That Applies
to the Random Variable ET_Distance Yielding the (average) Distance Between
Any Two Neighboring Communicating Civilizations in the Galaxy
Random variable
Probability distribution
Probability density function
Numerical constant C related to the Milky
Wav size
Mean value
Variance
Standard deviation
All the moments, i.e. k-th moment
Mode ( = abscissa of the log normal peak)
Value of the Mode Peak
Median ( = fifty-fifty probability value for N)
Skewness
Kurtosis
Expression of μin terms of the lower (ai)
and upper (bi) limits of the Drake uniform
input random variables Di
Expression of cr 2
in terms of the lower (ai)
and upper (bi) limits of the Drake uniform
inout random variables Di
20
ET_Distance between any two neighboring
ET civilizations in galaxy assuming they are
UNIFORMLY distributed throughout the
whole oalaxv volume.
Unnamed
3
/ET Dtstan,.,(r) = -
- '
JI ,,-
(Er_ DiS lancc) =Ce '.1e 18
! /' k' a-
(Ef_DiS(ance') = ck e :i e 18
- -
r,wdc = rp,ak = Ce J e '!
Peak Value of .r~_I_D1>1'm«:(r) =
] JI (T-
= fET D,,urn«· (,.nwk l = - ·e.1,elS
c5;cr
"
me<lian = m = Ce -1
K .:!....':_ " ~
--'-=e '! +2e :i +3e 'J -6
(K, )'
UNCLASSIFIED//1"91!. 91"1"!!!111L tl!!I! 911Li

Not linked to a story yet.

About this file

Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 55 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.