Other plans for the money include running sample 1940s school lessons, where children can dress in period costume and take part in gas mark drills.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Grants give pupils taste of WWII

For one thing, the sample size of this study is extremely small: one school.

FORBES: KIPP and the Charter School Lottery

The school is in the process of patenting a process in which dogs would sample the air left in the wake of travelers passing through an airport terminal.

CNN: Are dogs the key to bomb detection at airports?

Up until recently, the predominant approach has been frequentist statistics, the kind you most likely learned in school, which utilizes controlled variables and large sample sizes to arrive at conclusions that are statistically significant.

FORBES: Strategy at Digital Speed

Instead, they are considering gathering information from the vast, centralised databases held by government, such as tax records, benefit databases, electoral lists and school rolls, as well as periodic polling of a sample of the population.

ECONOMIST: The traditional census is dying, and a good thing too