The NSA's Math Problem

Thanks to Jim Murphy @ ODLG and Vicki Axelrod @ ONA-Prac for tipping me off to "The NSA's Math Problem," a nice NY Times Op-Ed piece which explains the futility of the NSA's massive SNA initiative (previously mentioned here). Simply put, there are too many phone calls unrelated to terrorist activity and too many terrorist relationships unexpressed by recent phone calls.

Op-Ed Author Jonathan David Farley (a mathematics fellow at Stanford Univeristy who specializes in counter-terrorism) suggests "concept analysis" as a more useful alternative. Valdis Krebs (also on ONA-Prac) points to Jeff Jonas' post about more specific focus on meaningful relationships to measure connections.

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