Surely this is showing correlation, but not necessarily causation. There are probably many fields where improvements in X have happened, along with greater compute power. How much the improvement in X is attributable to greater computing power is surely very hard to quantify. Or am I missing something?
For the oil example, I can think of a very simple explanation that has nothing to do with computing power. They state that the drilling success rate was 10% in 1940 and 70% in 2010. In other words, out of 10 exploratory drills, 9 were dry in 1940 and only 3 in 2010. And since the companies use computers to predict the presence of oil, and the computing power has increased, voila, the computing power explains the increased success.
But the alternative explanation is that over time oil could be found at higher and higher depths. The cost of exploration has increased. When it does not cost you much to drill a shallow hole (in 1940), you don't mind if you miss 9 times out of 10. But if you have to put in millions of dollars to drill to thousands of meters depths, then you think twice (or maybe 10 times) before you drill.
Any prediction system will give you an estimated probability of success. If the cost of failure is not high, you may decide to drill as soon as p > 10%. But if it's high, you may increase the threshold to 90%.
Of course, I'm not saying this is all there is to it. But it's likely that this explained part of the increased success. Another part is no doubt due to more experience. Another is due to algorithmic advances. Yet another to the improvement in the seismic sensors and technology used.
> Yet another to the improvement in the seismic sensors and technology used.
This is a huge one. Almost all of that geoseismic downhole sensing technology uses radioactive emissions. In 1940, it was impossible to "see" anything downhole with any reliability. Nowadays it's passe.
