COMPUTER BATTLE IN ELECTION

Who won the computer battle last night. You did If you followed the election on any of the three major networks you saw the fastest most complete coverage in history. This makes you the winner in the socalled battle among the computer systems of three competing manufacturers including IBM All three systems helped the networks do a better reporting job. What does it prove Election reporting is a dramatic way to demonstrate the reliability of modern computer systems under conditions of stress and urgency.

Yet the real significance of what you saw last night lies in the computer methods that were demonstratedmethods that can cut right to the heart of enormous problems in business science and communications. To make election predictions for example mathematicians create a statistical model of the voting public. Then as early returns stream in the computer projects the probable final result according to the model in its memory Roughly the same technique can be used to make a market projection a weather fore cast or a study in medical research. These are the jobs computers are doing every day behind the scenes and heres where they render service beyond anything they do on election night CBS.