Statistics of Deadly Quarrels

by Lewis F. Richardson

"the notion of conflict, like the fact, has its roots deep within human interest"

Genres: Nonfiction, War

373 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1960

Reviews

[Emilysellars]

Fascinating book looking for statistical links between various root causes and armed conflict of any sort, from "minor" rebellions to WWII. Even if you generally oppose statistics and/or deadly quarrels, read this book for its witty dialogues in the style of Plato or Socrates. No, I'm not joking.

[Xabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to get hold of this book, but having read a few analyses (and even some CAS experiments verifying its findings), it can be summarized as follows: The distribution of armed conflict outbreaks mirrors that of a Poisson distribution, the same distribution used to model chaotic processes such as radioactive decay or DNA mutations. In other words, when observed in aggregate, the outbreak of war is not statistically differentiable from any other form of random catastrophe such as hurricanes or earthquakes.

Note that this is just the "10,000 foot view" of the matter when taken in a purely statistical sense based on the number of conflicts over time. It does not mean that individual wars happen randomly like natural catastrophes, for each conflict has its own set of causes and drivers (people still have agency). It's just that as with hurricanes or earthquakes, it's difficult to predict how many conflicts going to happen and when, at least currently.