1. IMSL - Alien Activity Reporting Division*
* So Damned Secret, We Don’t Really Exist.

2. UFO Activity Reporting in the UK
Up until 01 Dec
09 the Ministry
of Defence in
the United
Kingdom kept
records of
every sighting
of an
unidentified
Flying Object
(UFO) reported
by members of
the public.

3. The Ministry of Defence
We don’t know why
the government went
to the effort of
collecting and
recording this
data*, but we’ve not
seen any coherent
analysis of it.
So what does this
data tell us about
UFO sightings over
the UK?
* It’s possible that this was a cold war legacy issue, and there were
concerns regarding the presence of enemy aircraft over the UK. Then
again, it’s not unknown for the UK MoD to do things without having any
specific objective, logic or rationale in mind…

4. Where do UFO sightings occur?
locations of individual ‘heat map’ giving
incidents. concentrations of activity.

5. Where do UFO sightings occur? #2
If you want to see a UFO
population density of
go to Anglesey (it may
Britian. (light green =
be Prince William in a
low pop density)
Helicopter) or Cornwall
(it may be the cider…)
For a UFO sighting you
need two things – the
viewer and the object
itself.Correlations
Clear
More viewers = more
likelihood of a sighting?
But also
interesting
anomalies…

6. When do UFO sightings occur?
Your best chance of seeing a UFO (as opposed to a chinese
lantern or a firework) is mid-July to mid September.
No spike for new- Interesting period of
year fireworks… heightened activity
with no immediately Halloween
apparent explanation.
Bonfire
Night.
Weekend closest to Diwali
Chinese Lantern
Festival

7. When do UFO sightings occur? #2
Need to insert a timewheel here – I think it will show that sightings tend to peak at the
weekend, particularly around pub throwing out time…

8. Is it the drink?
Left: shows UFO
reporting.
Right: shows
Alcohol
consumption in
the UK.
No clear correlation
between alcohol consumption
and UFO sightings on
available data…

9. Trends and Patterns in
Appearance
By far the most
common colour for a
UFO is Red / Orange
By far the most common
shape for a UFO is
circular / spherical.
Are we seeing quite a lot
of Chinese lanterns being
reported as UFOs?

10. Are any sightings corroborated?
By picking one day
(25 Jul) we can see
that the sightings Data for these events
are spread across the shows sinificant
country. Only two discrepancies in
(Reading area) are shape, colour and
close enough to be number of objects.
likely to be the same
object…

11. Are any sightings corroborated?
#2
By focussing in on
just one colour of
UFO (white) we can
see a similarly large
geographical and
temporal
distribution.
Looking at the source reporting
shows that there are significant
But interestingly the differences between the accounts.
two temporally close
events are also
geographically close…

12. Who Are IMSL?
IMSL are insert guff here.
We don’t really have an Alien Activity Reporting Division.
We just found an interesting dataset.
But the question we would like you to ask is this:
If a bunch of geeks can do this with some quirky
data about aliens, what insight could they provide
you by using the same tools and techniques on your
data?.
Drop us an email, and let’s talk. Because...
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!

13. References
Find the raw data on UFOs here:
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInformation/Pub
licationScheme/SearchPublicationScheme/UfoReportsInTheUk.h
tm
Find out more about the awesome Palantir intelligence platform here:
http://www.palantir.com/government/analysis-blog
Photo of office workers on slide three (who have nothing whatsoever to do with the
MOD) is taken from this site:
http://www.impactlab.net/2010/08/24/the-end-of-modern-
management-and-corporate-bureaucracy/
Wales population stats from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Welsh_principal_areas_by_population_density

14. Methodology
In order to produce the slides below we:
• Took the PDF for all the 2009 data (the most recent) and converted it into an
spread-sheet.
• Got rid of any data which was too vague / nebulous to use (lack of dates, locations
etc)
• Allocated a grid to all of the locations given. For larger towns and cities, where no
specific location was given, we chose the centre of mass for that area.
• Drew out some specific elements of the data which appear as ‘free text’ – for
example, colour, number of objects and direction of travel. We then entered these
as separate columns in the spread-sheet for each incident.
• Imported the data onto the Palantir Analysis Platform.
• Used publicly available files giving the administrative boundaries in the UK in
conjunction with statistical data for different variables (population, alcohol
consumption etc)
• A complete list of sources is given on the penultimate slide.