As the southern spring of 2014 approached the search authorities prepared to undertake a search of the seabed where their calculations indicated MH370 had gone. They hired a Dutch marine survey company called Fugro, which dispatched three ships to the area: Fugro Discovery, Fugro Equator and Fugro Supporter. The area they were going to search had been defined by the probability density function we’ve described earlier. It stretched about 600 miles long and covered water that was about three miles deep. One Australian politician declared that they were 97 percent confident that they would find the plane’s wreckage. Needless to say, it didn’t work out that way.

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