Is Something Wrong with this Picture (The Search for 9M-MRO) ??

From Forward I page v of "Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370:

Uncertainty is all pervasive—whether it relates to everyday personal choices and actions, or as background to business and policy decisions, or economic and climate predictions. In recent times, few things have attracted as much attention as the uncertainty surrounding the final whereabouts of MH370.

Yes, indeed.

A cadre (and a large cadre at that) of very qualified people have tossed their hat in the uncertainty reduction ring - the SSWG, the DSTG, CSIRO, to name a few. I will refer to this group as the SSI, Search Strategy Insiders. The SSI has representatives from Boeing, Inmarsat, and Thales. Who can claim to know more about the performance characteristics of a 777 aircraft than Boeing? Who can claim to know more about the Inmarsat system than Inmarsat? Who can claim to know more about how the AES functions than Thales?

Additionally the SSI has access to 20 previous flights of 9M-MRO. The data from these 20 previous flights includes the ACARS data, so the SSI knows exactly where the aircraft was located, the ground track of the aircraft, and the fuel consumption relative to these 20 previous flights. Data of this type has never been made available to anyone but the SSI.

From page 27 of "Bayesian Methods..." referring to the BTO calibration/validation:

The data used to construct the histogram and the empirical parameters were obtained from logs of the 20 flights of 9M-MRO prior to the accident flight.

From page 30 of "Bayesian Methods..." referring to the collection of BFO statistics:

Empirical statistics of the residual measurement noise w^BFOk were determined using the previous 20 flights of 9M-MRO. Data points corresponding to when the aircraft was climbing or descending were excluded.

The SSI also has access to the radar data, not simply graphics, which has never been put in the public domain. It is fair to say that the SSI has a great deal of information that allows them to test and to refine their modeling. The rest of us have nothing but the Inmarsat logs from the accident flight, so there is no way to validate our own modeling. Still, the terminal locations derived by the SSI are consistent with the terminal locations derived by the rest of us. There is obviously no magic here.

So, what is the take-away? My early conclusion is that the ensemble of data associated with the accident flight is not sufficient to determine a terminus, and so would conclude any other person reasonably skilled in the background analytics. The data can only broadly constrain the possible terminal locations. It cannot constrain terminal locations sufficiently well to have a high degree of confidence in the results of an under water search conducted in a relatively small area.

The only things wrong are our expectations.