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Can Statistics Predict the Outcome of a War?

Posted by kdawson on from the first-you-have-to-get-the-inputs-right dept.

StatisticallyDeadGuy writes "A University of Georgia scientist has developed a statistical system that can, she claims, predict the outcome of wars with an accuracy of 80 percent. Her approach, applied retrospectively, says the US chance of victory in the first Gulf War was 93%, while the poor Soviets only had a 7% chance in Afghanistan (if only they'd known; failure maybe triggered the collapse of the USSR). As for the current Iraq conflict: the US started off with a 70% chance of a successful regime change, which was duly achieved — but extending the mission past this to support a weak government has dropped the probability of ultimate success to 26%. Full elaboration of the forecasting methodology is laid out in a new paper (subscription required — link goes to the abstract). Some details can be gleaned from her 2006 draft (PDF)."

2 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If i'm reading this correctly by Rogerborg · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I dunno, she looks like a double bagger to me. Maybe with some make-up and a new hairdo.

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    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  2. A Prez Scores In The Low 70% In Easy Classes by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And starts a war 100% favored by the military-industrial complex and big oil, in an area that is maybe 40% pro-US (if we're lucky), and expends ~120% of the lives taken on 9/11, and spends another 100% of the previous National debt to do it, it seems like the odds of success are somewhere down in the 10% range to me.

    But then what do I know? I never went AWOL from the Alabama National Guard...