The company also began testing a mathematical formula to try to predict which employees are most likely to leave, based on factors like employee reviews.

WSJ: Google to Give Staff 10% Raise

According to an ongoing investigation by the Washington Post, who initiated the McColo shutdown, the Srizbi bots have been programmed with a mathematical formula that in the event of a shutdown generate a random but unique web address to check for updates.

BBC: Spam on rise after brief reprieve

Eventually it found a team led by Cynthia Barnhard, a logistics expert at America's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which devised an elaborate algorithm that is now at the heart of eCourier's business, in much the same way that a mathematical formula drives Google's search engine.

ECONOMIST: A courier company goes online

The economist Harry Markowitz won the Nobel prize for designing a complex mathematical formula for picking fund managers.

WSJ: Matt Ridley on Gut Feelings and the Writings of Gerd Gigerenzer | Mind & Matter

But there are seeds, too, in the very nature of things: a promise, after all, is only a promise, even when it is supported by divine revelation, and the chances against its fulfillment may be put into a depressing mathematical formula.

FORBES: Look, Up In The Sky! It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Congressman!

Duckworth-Lewis, named after the two statisticians who came up with the formula, is the mathematical way that cricket works out the result of a rain-affected match.

BBC: Strauss bemused by Windies error