AAWSAP DIRD, An Introduction to the Statistical Drake Equation, March 2010

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equation more and more new scientific information
as soon as it becomes available. In the long run,
the Statistical Drake equation might just become a
huge computer code, growing up in size and
especially in the depth of the scientific information
it contained. It would thus be Humanity's fast
"Encyclopaedia Galactica,"
Unfortunately, to extend the Drake equation to
Statistics, it was necessary to use a mathematical
apparatus that is more sophisticated than just the
simple product of seven numbers.
When this author had the honour and privilege
to present his results at the SETI Institute on April
lJlh, 2008, in front of an audjence also including
Professor Frank Drake, he felt he had to add these
words: " My apologies, Frank, for disrupting the
beautiful simplicity of your equation,"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author is grateful to Drs. Jill Tarter, Paul
Davies, Seth Shostak, Doug Vakoch, Tom Pierson,
Carol Oliver, Paul Shuch and Kathryn Denning for
attending his first presentation ever about these
topics at the "Beyond" Center of the University of
Arizona at Phoenix on February 8th , 2008. He also
would like to thank Dan Werthi.mer and rus School
of SETI young experts for keeping alive the
interplay between experimental and theoretical
SETI. But the greatest "thanks" goes of course to
the Teacher to all of us: Professor Frank D. Drake,
whose equation opened a new way of thinking
about the past and the future of Human in the
Galaxy.
REFERE CES
[I] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake equation
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Astrobiology
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank Drake
l5J Athanasios Papoulis and S. Unnikrishna Pillai,
"Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic
Processes", Fourth Edition, Tata McGraw-Hill,
ew Delhi, 2002, ISBN 0-07-048658-l.
[6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma distribution
[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central limit theore
ill
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulants
(9) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median
[ I0]Jeffrey Bennett and Seth Shostak, "Life in the
Universe", Second Edition, Pearson - Addison­
Wesley, San Francisco, 2007, ISBN 0-8053­
4753-4. See in particular page 404.
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