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Statistics of Deadly Quarrels

Posted by Hemos on from the the-science-of-war dept.

CarlNorthcore writes "Brian Hayes published this paper in the Computing Science chapter of Jan-Feb's American Scientist. It provides a fascinating and [sadly] relevant statistical exploration of our world's deadly conflicts. Look out for the excellent "Web of Wars" diagram."

4 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. How To Stop Wars by Mittermeyer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a less obtuse and more practical summation of an 80s book that somehow got short shrift. How To Stop A War is more usable then that article.

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    ________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
  2. Mirror of Web of Wars image by JayAndSilentBob · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just the image, not the surrounding page..... http://www.sellingmysoul.com/web.jpg Hope someone else grabbed the rest of the site before it died....

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    Love,
    Jay and Silent Bob
  3. Data covers too much, too old by mybecq · · Score: 5, Informative

    Although this diagram looks nice, it doesn't present a clear view of what is happening now. It consists of all conflicts between countries from Richardson's statistics (1820 - 1950), with refinements from Wilkinson.

    Consider the graph (when it eventually comes up). All the red-lines represent Category 7, which is only the two world wars (the most recent of which was 50+ years ago). Category 6 is for deaths of from 500,000 to 2,000,000.

    It would be nice to have information regarding something in more recent history, such as the last 10 - 20 years.

  4. Re:A bit biased by jonathanjo · · Score: 5, Informative

    I didn't like the fact that the thing has no indication of time. What about the fact that the US has been around for little over 200 years while other countries (especially the European ones with lots of lines) have been around for much more than that. Maybe they should limit this thing by time or something.

    This covers the period from 1820 to 1950, as explained in the article. And the caption states, "The diagram ignores many changes in national status (such as the assembly and disassembly of Yugoslavia)." Since they used TLD country codes presumably they are ascribing conflicts to the current nation on the soil of the nation that engaged in it, for convenience. "They" *did* "limit this thing by time or something."

    RTFA.

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    Fight for your right to read books!