FiveThirtyEight's Signals

On May 3, 1997, Garry Kasparov sat down to do battle against his nemesis, the IBM chess-playing machine "Deep Blue", though this time with an improved model, "Deeper Blue". Kasparov won the first game with ease. However, Game 2 proved to be different.

In the early 1960's, the Dallas Cowboys wanted to develop a computer system that would evaluate draft eligible college players. Enter A. Salam Qureishi, a brilliant Indian computer programmer and statistician.

Grace Hopper dedicated her life to bringing computers to the masses, when most supposed the technology was only useful for scientists and the military. Through her genius, she taught software English, so that everyone could communicate with computers.

You know the name Kevin Durant. But unless you're a true basketball insider, you don't know the name of the man who helped Durant become an MVP: Justin Zormelo. A former student manager for the Georgetown basketball team, and a trained mathematician, Zormelo uses advanced analytics and film studies to propel players toward perfection, players like Durant.

In 1857 off the Carolina coast, the SS Central America sank in a Category 2 hurricane and with it, thirty-thousand pounds of gold valued today at roughly 548 million dollars. Over a century later and after many failed attempts to locate "The Ship of Gold," a team of explorers led by Tommy Thompson statistically limited the possible locations where the ship went down.

1998 Minnesota. A heated race is taking place for the empty Governor's chair between District Attorney and Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey III, Republican nomineeand current Mayor of St. Paul Norm Coleman and a third candidate, the mayor of a tiny town called Brooklyn Park running under the reform party named James George Janos, or as the rest of the world knew him; Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

In 1994, the New York City Police Department began using CompStat, an organizational computer management tool, intended to map crime and identify problems. In 2008, because of concerns about the possible misuse of CompStat, a NYPD officer named Adrian Schoolcraft began secretly recording police conversations at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn.

Finding a date by computer is pretty common. Not so in 1965, when a Harvard math whiz came along with an idea to harness technology in a way that was so big, so fresh, that it could change the game entirely. Junior Jeff Tarr was fed up coming home alone from mixers at women's colleges, and figured that a computer could do a better job at getting him dates.