The mathematics of warfare

Economist : Although a British scientist, Lewis Fry Richardson, published a statistical analysis as early as 1948 of the frequency and severity of wars , his results to date have not had much impact. However, in a paper under review for Science, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida, and colleagues have shown that Richardson’s findings can be used to forecast the course and severity of terrorist and insurgent attacks. Using data on insurgencies against American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, Johnson and his team found that they could predict the future course of a local insurgency by knowing the number of days between the first and second attacks. The formula they developed depicts a progress curve with two antagonistic groups in a constant competition that leads to stasis as each adaptation by one side is countered by an adaptation by the other.