Very cool use of statistics. Survivors of a sunken battle ship give disparate, 100-mile wide reports of where it sank, and there follow 70 years of unsuccessful searches. Statisticians plot the distribution of reported locations, use theory to determine its central tendency and recommend a small search area. Wreck found. Nerds to the rescue!
Freakonomics: Nazis, Sunken Ships and a 67-year-old Game of Telephone