Das ist vielleicht ein bisschen übertrieben, aber anscheinend gab es sie, die Formel zu Panzerschätzung im 2. Weltkrieg, schreibt der Guardian:

The statisticians had one key piece of information, which was the serial numbers on captured mark V tanks. The statisticians believed that the Germans, being Germans, had logically numbered their tanks in the order in which they were produced. And this deduction turned out to be right. It was enough to enable them to make an estimate of the total number of tanks that had been produced up to any given moment.