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MikeF
05-05-2009, 06:30 PM
Interesting findings from Ted.com. Uses math to observe trends in the Surge in Iraq and other wars.

Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_war.html)

About this talk:
By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war -- and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts.

About Sean Gourley:
Sean Gourley, trained as a physicist, has turned his scientific mind to analyzing data about a messier topic: modern war and conflict.

v/r

Mike

drewconway
05-05-2009, 07:48 PM
Just a heads up, what Sean finds is actually a very old result that is well-known in social science. In fact, it was first discovered about sixty years ago by a meteorologist.

http://www.drewconway.com/zia/?p=577

I am a bit surprised it is getting the coverage that it is.

Ken White
05-05-2009, 08:32 PM
human interaction will always show patterns -- and different modelers will draw different patterns from the same data. You cannot put people in boxes IMO; you have to deal with the person or group as they are and as they constantly shift and change.

Well, you can put 'em in boxes and rely on trends, I suppose. Seen a lot of folks do some fascinating variations on that. None successfully, as I recall...

All things considered, though, I don't guess a Physicist playing around with the People thing is any worse than Economists trying to do that...

Surferbeetle
05-05-2009, 09:31 PM
Drew,

Thanks for the link, it led to the JASS site (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html) which has some interesting papers and references a book from the Springer (http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=0-102-0-0-0) publishing house; I enjoy some of their financial mathematical modeling series books...quality works which require a fair amount of time, but are well worth the read.

Regards,

Steve

Larry Dunbar
05-09-2009, 05:29 PM
Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war

v/r

Mike

While it might be old news, it is new news to me. I thought the most stunning conclusion was that Alpha was the structure of the insurgency and this structure followed the same slope downward for all war. This means that it doesn’t matter what the structure of an insurgency looks like, it follows the same path.

Of course, right now that slope (path) is actually moving upward for the war in Iraq, which is really bad news. It probably means that the surge worked well at first, but has now out-lived its usefulness. The surge was able to isolate the fragmented insurgency into separate orientations (that were more deadly, but less able to freely carry-out attacks) to control the number of attacks (as you said on another post, command doesn’t really have control), but then something else has happened. The insurgency has become more fragmented and more deadly.

Because, according to the data, it doesn’t matter what the insurgency looks like, it looks like a whole new war has broken out. Sean didn’t say where, spatially, this war was taking place, but I am not sure what will keep it from spreading, if the surge didn’t work. Of course I am also assuming the US forces are trying to maintain the surge, and I may be wrong on that. It could be we are adapting to this new war or the Iraqi Security Forces have the lead.

It doesn’t look like the Iraqi Security Forces are prepared to handle this insurgency as the Iraqi Security Forces are largely unfunded (let's hope this doesn't happen to ours) and (perhaps) unwanted.

As I commented on Drew’s post, it doesn’t appear like our troops are ever coming home. As this new war spreads, we will simply become more and more involved. It also might be that our forces or nation doesn't understand another war has broken-out since the surge, if that is indeed what the data is telling us, and I think it is.

If we don't understand the situation, it is very easy to get sucked-up into a very nasty one, without our vertical and horizontal forces being prepared.

Perhaps a "fake" science, like social science, will tell you the vertical or horizontal forces don't need to know, I think that is a lie.

Gringo Malandro
05-09-2009, 06:32 PM
human interaction will always show patterns -- and different modelers will draw different patterns from the same data. You cannot put people in boxes IMO; you have to deal with the person or group as they are and as they constantly shift and change.

Well, you can put 'em in boxes and rely on trends, I suppose. Seen a lot of folks do some fascinating variations on that. None successfully, as I recall...

All things considered, though, I don't guess a Physicist playing around with the People thing is any worse than Economists trying to do that...

I think the military might actually benefit from applying some principles of economics. And data analysis can make sense out of seamingly unrelated events. But it can't replace common sense. It was, after all, often physicists who built mathmatical models for pricing financial products. Oops!

Larry Dunbar
05-09-2009, 06:53 PM
"But it can't replace common sense. It was, after all, often physicists who built mathmatical models for pricing financial products. Oops!"

True, common sense would have told us not to put that much power in the hands of greedy and unregulated bodies, but how was the physicist supposed to know? It doesn't seem related.

Sean pretty-much just laid it out without any conclusions, as did the physicists who put the mathmatical models for pricing financial products together. It was then on a need-to-know protocol. The financial sector picked the wrong guys.

Tom Odom
05-10-2009, 08:07 AM
While it might be old news, it is new news to me. I thought the most stunning conclusion was that Alpha was the structure of the insurgency and this structure followed the same slope downward for all war. This means that it doesn’t matter what the structure of an insurgency looks like, it follows the same path.

Of course, right now that slope (path) is actually moving upward for the war in Iraq, which is really bad news. It probably means that the surge worked well at first, but has now out-lived its usefulness. The surge was able to isolate the fragmented insurgency into separate orientations (that were more deadly, but less able to freely carry-out attacks) to control the number of attacks (as you said on another post, command doesn’t really have control), but then something else has happened. The insurgency has become more fragmented and more deadly.

Really? that would be news if it were even close to the facts on the ground. The "surge" was not a monolithic event and neither was the insurgency.


Because, according to the data, it doesn’t matter what the insurgency looks like, it looks like a whole new war has broken out. Sean didn’t say where, spatially, this war was taking place, but I am not sure what will keep it from spreading, if the surge didn’t work. Of course I am also assuming the US forces are trying to maintain the surge, and I may be wrong on that. It could be we are adapting to this new war or the Iraqi Security Forces have the lead.

Again that would be very interesting if it looked that way on the ground. Your assumption on the "surge" is much dated. ISF are very much in the lead.


It doesn’t look like the Iraqi Security Forces are prepared to handle this insurgency as the Iraqi Security Forces are largely unfunded (let's hope this doesn't happen to ours) and (perhaps) unwanted.

Who is unfunded? The ISF certainly is funded; there are issues with Iraq's budget but the ISF are hardly unfunded.


As I commented on Drew’s post, it doesn’t appear like our troops are ever coming home. As this new war spreads, we will simply become more and more involved. It also might be that our forces or nation doesn't understand another war has broken-out since the surge, if that is indeed what the data is telling us, and I think it is.

Again a new war as opposed to an old war? Who has issues understanding what?


If we don't understand the situation, it is very easy to get sucked-up into a very nasty one, without our vertical and horizontal forces being prepared.

Perhaps a "fake" science, like social science, will tell you the vertical or horizontal forces don't need to know, I think that is a lie

I agree that understanding is mandatory; exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?

Do us all a favor and introduce yourself (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33)so we could put your comments in context.

Thanks
Tom

William F. Owen
05-10-2009, 12:03 PM
.

Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_war.html)


I'm not sure if this is a badly timed April Fool or if we are supposed to take this seriously at all.

Seriously? What has the data he gathered go to do with the output he is showing and also how is this output insightful, useful or relevant?

How does it describe the structure of the insurgency? He states it does but I don't see the proof.

I am extremely interested in an explanation.

Mark O'Neill
05-10-2009, 12:58 PM
Really? that would be news if it were even close to the facts on the ground. The "surge" was not a monolithic event and neither was the insurgency.



Again that would be very interesting if it looked that way on the ground. Your assumption on the "surge" is much dated. ISF are very much in the lead.



Who is unfunded? The ISF certainly is funded; there are issues with Iraq's budget but the ISF are hardly unfunded.



Again a new war as opposed to an old war? Who has issues understanding what?



I agree that understanding is mandatory; exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?

Do us all a favor and introduce yourself (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33)so we could put your comments in context.

Thanks
Tom

You know the old 'horizontal and vertical force'. Surely All COIN experts use those terms ;-) don't tell me the pony soldiers don't?? :confused: gee, I am amazed...:wry: You had better get across what is happening on the ground.................:-]

MikeF
05-10-2009, 02:20 PM
I'm not sure if this is a badly timed April Fool or if we are supposed to take this seriously at all.

Seriously? What has the data he gathered go to do with the output he is showing and also how is this output insightful, useful or relevant?

How does it describe the structure of the insurgency? He states it does but I don't see the proof.

I am extremely interested in an explanation.

I posted it b/c I want to see what others felt about it. Gurley doesn't suggest any conclusions b/c he cannot. He is a physicist, not a soldier, but he did find a trend. Moreover, he's getting people across both the academic and military worlds upset, but he's getting them to think.

I think that's a good thing- too much of our past policy was based off idealogy not reason and history. He hasn't proving anything, but he's started a discussion.

He may not have found anything, but I don't think that he should be dismissed as irrelevant. The next step is to gather more data and test it. Using econometrics(statistics on crack), one can determine if his equation is useful or simply luck.

And he has a cool accent.

I'm on my Emerson kick right now. We'll see where it leads. Here's what he says,


All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious leaders dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain all phenomena


In truth, undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

v/r

Mike

MikeF
05-10-2009, 03:43 PM
Here's another way to look at it abstract as it is.

Time

In times of doubt
In times of fear
In times of anger
In due time

Simply a wave
in the ocean
of what we call
time

Searching
Striving
for nothing
and everything

Paradox,
but is it?
Because we simply cannot comprehend
the Creator's equation

If we would only simply listen
to what she has to say
Maybe one day
In due time

v/r

Mike

Surferbeetle
05-10-2009, 04:37 PM
Mathematical modeling and simulation (war gaming) allows anybody who is willing to spend the time, effort, or resources to cost effectively examine various scenarios. From this examination one can develop probable costs, schedules, and benchmarks associated with a particular endeavor and chose the one most likely to result in success. As with any methodology, advice derived from mathematical modeling and simulation does not give a leader a magic pass to ignore common sense nor is it to be feared as voodoo magic whose use will consign our souls to the lowest circles of hell.

America as a whole understands the importance of war-gaming at a very deep level; note our world-renowned college educational system and until recently, our possession of the worlds strongest financial system. Our college system consistently explores the concepts of mathematical modeling and simulation in associate through graduate educational programs in business, engineering, finance, and manufacturing – all disciplines that are crucial to a nations ability to survive and thrive. When the immediate dust of the current financial debacle settles, I expect that we will still have the strongest financial system...however we have permanently damaged ourselves and it will take time and effort to recover.

The Economists 2009 Pocket World in Figures ranks economies by GDP in USD:
1. America 13,164 billion
2. Japan 4,368 billion
3. Germany 2,897
4. China 2,645 billion
5. United Kingdom 2,377 billion

In the US military the Air Force and Navy have taken a page from the successes of the civilian world (and of course vice versa) and worked to incorporate the use of mathematical modeling and simulation into their daily operations. We in much of the US Army still prefer to war game things in the physical world: our Combat Training Centers are heavily resourced examples of this preference. We in the Army are slowly, when compared to my civilian experiences, moving in the direction of incorporating mathematical modeling and simulation into our TTP’s. This journey will take time, have setbacks, and generally be a PITA however when balanced against the adapt or die imperative it’s an easy choice to make.

@ Mike F. - Thanks for starting the discussion and providing the Ted link.

MikeF
05-10-2009, 04:52 PM
But, I do. I believe that we are at one of those times in history where the decisions we make will effect our future. It is simply a matter on how we act or react. For your consideration. This narrative is simply one way of looking at today's world.

v/r

Mike

I think you ought to know, dear brothers, about the hard time we went through in Asia. We were really crushed and overwhelmed, and feared we would never live through it. We felt we were doomed to die and saw how powerless we were to help ourselves; but that was good, for then we put everything into the hands of God, who alone could save us, for He can even raise the dead. And He did help us, and saved us from a terrible death; yes, and we can expect him to do it again.
-Apostle Paul and Timothy's letter to Corinth

Today's world seems chaotic, confusing, and uncontrollable- terrorism, economic upheaval, flu pandemics, insurgencies, narco-insurgencies, and failed/failing states. In these times of perceived crisis, some use fear to push individual agendas while others are overcome by greed and manipulate events for pursuit of gluttony. Conversely, leaders, commanders, and statesmen have taken action during these times to push projects of progress to better serve the common good.

We are in such a time now, and we need to consider how we will act. In the big ocean that scopes and frames what we call human history, time, matter, and space, waves ebbs and flow in a perfect pattern. Every generation or two, deep within the depths of darkness along the ocean's floor, the earth shifts and quakes in a bifurcation point, and the energy produced forms a tsunami.

We are in such a time now. It is neither good nor bad, better or worse. It just is. Paradoxically, today is the same as yesterday. It is simply a matter of how we feel and think about it.

The arithematics of life I suppose. If it is possible to measure nature in math, if it is possible to send a man to the moon and beyond, then it maybe possible to develop laws of social sciences if the creator allows us to see his equations.

Today, I see opportunity, but it is more than that- I am pondering and dreaming of the world that my great-great grandchildren will inherit. Will they be conscripted in an occupational army trying to maintain the American Empire? Will they work as social entrepeneurs trying to educate the illiterate, feed the hungry, house the homeless, and employ the unemployed? Will they live in a police state as the Department of Homeland Security attempts to control thoughts in fear of a terrorist attack? Will they be studying the former United States of America in their textbooks? I wander and wonder.


"But, My son, be warned: there is no end of opinions ready to be expressed. Studying them can go on forever and become very exhausting!" (Ecclesiastes 12:12 LB).

MikeF
05-10-2009, 10:01 PM
We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgement as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means.
-Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam



There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn't mean that it is actually irrational, but it is surely not rational. Perhaps it is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that makes sense only if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in. -Wm. Paul Young, The Shack

so in the middle you have a paradox...I'm still in the middle...

v/r

Mike

William F. Owen
05-11-2009, 05:57 AM
I posted it b/c I want to see what others felt about it. Gurley doesn't suggest any conclusions b/c he cannot. He is a physicist, not a soldier, but he did find a trend. Moreover, he's getting people across both the academic and military worlds upset, but he's getting them to think.
Mike, good job posting it. I think it merits attention, but having given it some I am less than impressed.


I think that's a good thing- too much of our past policy was based off idealogy not reason and history. He hasn't proving anything, but he's started a discussion.
Well the field of military data and statistics is vast. Despite what he says, I am 99% sure the Pentagon has done the same analysis, and found it generates nothing useful. The discussion is probably more about the relevance and utility of this work rather than if it tells us anything new or insightful, but I am not closed minded in such things.

I would however me more than slightly wary as to the degree of self promotion that seems to be at work.


And he has a cool accent.
He's a New Zealander!! Wait till you hear my accent.

Larry Dunbar
05-11-2009, 04:43 PM
“exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?”

War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force. Together the vertical and horizontal forces move the displacement from potential to kinetic and back again. It works in a loop and that loop, to some, is called an OODA loop.

Vertical forces are the forces that the horizontal forces of a country are able to support. The horizontal force is the amount of force between you and I, which is growing. Actually, the horizontal force is the amount of force a society has between its past and future, but it is not always (never) figured in that way.

Force at a distance is the definition of energy. When the vertical force moves, the distance from one country to another, it is called kinetic energy. The amount of power, energy per second, a country can throw at another country depends on how much vertical force the horizontal force can support, @ the distance and over time.

My guess why the power-law distribution “works” in Iraq or any war is that Alpha describes the structure of the insurgency and that structure, in Iraq, represents the orientation on the other side of the power curve of the US, and to a degree the Iraqi Security Forces. The Data is not for a particular orientation (religious, warlords, tribes, or thugs) only that orientation opposing the new Orientation. I capitalized the last Orientation because it represents the second "O" in the OODA loop (Orientation is what a vertical force does after it Penetrates the Observed environment of another displacement; it Isolates the displacement into Orientations, isolation does not always mean: to kill).

William F. Owen
05-11-2009, 05:06 PM
War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force. Together the vertical and horizontal forces move the displacement from potential to kinetic and back again. It works in a loop and that loop, to some, is called an OODA loop.


I don't follow that at all, and which OODA loop are you talking about? Boyd's and if so which iteration of the loop?

Plus I don't remember Boyd mentioning any of the aspects you are talking about relating to the OODA loop, which as far as I know was entirely cognitive.

MikeF
05-11-2009, 05:36 PM
“exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?”

War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force. Together the vertical and horizontal forces move the displacement from potential to kinetic and back again. It works in a loop and that loop, to some, is called an OODA loop.

In the military world, we call this METT-TC. If you look at a state as a homeostatic system, then you may be able forecast how that system will change when you introduce "new" energy or external forces into it.

Wilf- this understanding is intuitive to you, Ken, etc, but it is not intuitive to most. Science can provide another lens to help explain it.

For example, Iraq circa 2002 was stable in Iraqi terms. They had a nice dictator, and things worked. There were no suicide bombers (i think). The radical Islamist plotting to ovethrow the government in places like Turki Village were marginalized, etc.

We decided that we should overthrow the natural order of thngs. We ASSUMED that after we took over, we coulld hold elections, and little americans would emerge from the ashes. We assumed that we could undertake such a venture with minimal force and cost. We were wrong. Our planning was based off ideology, not reason and historical fact.

I think we can do better in the future, but we have to apply the physical sciences along with the social sciences.

Gurley may be an opportunist, but I'm developing theories along similar lines that may help us to better plan and prosecute future interventions.

Larry's analogy to the displacement of energy has merit if you apply it to societies. Not sure about the OODA loop thing though.

v/r

Mike

jmm99
05-11-2009, 06:33 PM
may be useful to an individual in helping that person visualize a situation (let us say, war) to which the metaphor does not directly apply. E.g., Larry sees war as a matter of statics and dynamics - based on an engineering education.

Wilf see things in a very military context - based on an education in practical warfare - and he also has read and written much in that context. He does not need metaphors.

I suppose one could look at an "armed conflict" (let us say, Iraq) as akin to a problem in biochemical reaction kinetics - introduction of forces, energy and catalysts (don't forget them) into a homeostatic system (as MikeF suggests).

At least, we would be dealing with a living system there (and a lot of cool graphs, showing what works and what does not). But what does that add ? - except to the understanding of the individual who has developed the metaphor.

More generally, we see engineering concepts such as mass introduced into the "equations" of war (e.g., MOOSEMUSS). Now to a engineering-scientific type (and yes, I do have a good degree in that area with some grad work), mass itself doesn't say much (so many particles of a defined substance).

But, there are some formulations which include mass: e.g, weight, vector forces, momentum, center of gravity, energy (after all, E=mc^2=nuks), that are used (sometimes usefully, sometimes not) as metaphors in the military art by its professionals. And, of course, we have CvC's fogs and frictions used as metaphors by him.

Sometimes metaphors are useful to groups of people, as well as to the individual. But, they also introduce terminology which has to be explained - and which can simply clutter up the picture and actually retard mutual understanding.

Admittedly, metaphors can be fun , but in the end you have to get down to the things which you actually do in your art and profession.

So, I guess I come down more on Wilf's side of the ledger - despite having little differences such as whether flying airliners into buildings can be classed as military operations in the context of an armed conflict. :D

---------------------

e.g., waves and surfing - or my now deceased colleague's maxim: "You have to roll with the flow." He was an artist; I am a technician - the maxim applies to both kinds of trial lawyers; but both end up expressing what counts in factual and legal terms.

Presley Cannady
05-11-2009, 06:44 PM
human interaction will always show patterns -- and different modelers will draw different patterns from the same data. You cannot put people in boxes IMO; you have to deal with the person or group as they are and as they constantly shift and change.

Modelers will almost certainly not draw different patterns from the same data. To arrive at a different distribution, you'll need to infer that the domain (in this case the sample size) is too small to rule out piecewise or differential behavior, or that the data set is inconsequential to your object of study. Either way, the fact remains to a degree of accuracy clusters of thinking human beings can be modeled successfully and have been for decades.

Now the data itself--particularly the chosen input streams--can definitely be challenged. Though it's unlikely that three independent studies happened upon k-power polynomial relationships between different sets of variables on their own, they can differ wildly in their constants.


Well, you can put 'em in boxes and rely on trends, I suppose. Seen a lot of folks do some fascinating variations on that. None successfully, as I recall...

If that's the case, we're wasting a lot of money on pshrinks, term insurance, and advertising with absolutely zero discernible benefit.


All things considered, though, I don't guess a Physicist playing around with the People thing is any worse than Economists trying to do that...

A physicist is generally a better working mathematician and statistician than an economist. We've had too few of those in the social sciences in recent decades.

MikeF
05-11-2009, 06:56 PM
So, I guess I come down more on Wilf's side of the ledger - despite having little differences such as whether flying airliners into buildings can be classed as military operations in the context of an armed conflict. :D

More than likely, y'all are correct, but that's my job right now so I'm gonna explore. Eventually, I'll graduate and go back to doing not thinking.

But, since you did mention the theory of relativity, what if it is actually a law that has yet to be proven?



v/r

Mike

Presley Cannady
05-11-2009, 07:41 PM
War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force. Together the vertical and horizontal forces move the displacement from potential to kinetic and back again. It works in a loop and that loop, to some, is called an OODA loop.

This I find very confusing, for one it attempts to be analogous with conservation of energy (T + V = c in a system), but its descriptive components (vertical, horizontal force) are aliens. I guess those components could be analogous to heat and work, but then "force" is a misnomer and orientation has little if anything to do with it (energy and energy flux are useless quantities if not represented as scalars). None of this really has anything to do with why Gourney et. al. divined a power law out of their data.


My guess why the power-law distribution “works” in Iraq or any war is that Alpha describes the structure of the insurgency and that structure, in Iraq, represents the orientation on the other side of the power curve of the US, and to a degree the Iraqi Security Forces.

Whether or not alpha represents the structure of the insurgency in any way remains to be seen (and I can't even find the results of this research online, so it may be premature to say the least). It's possible this "theory" why alpha is stable around some point (2.5) may be no more than one working hypothesis amongst many. Gourley is coupling another unstated assumption, group dynamics, to this model in order to explain alpha and his talk completely skimped over that point.

The power law "works" because we intuit the probability of destructive events occurring decreasing with their destructiveness (nuclear terrorism on a Western target is harder and costlier than setting an IED in your own backyard). Everything else is a question of how it behaves in a scaling limit. The fact that it behaves like a power law at all means that it can only not be a power law asymptotically--some other term overwhelms the scaling exponent and breaks invariance--or the function is piece wise with the addition of more data.

jmm99
05-11-2009, 07:54 PM
Since there were no little icons after a couple of your comments, I'll take them as serious comments.

Easy one first: a scientific theory is more than what the non-scientific use of the word "theory" implies. E.g., relativity (special and general) was built on prior proofs (e.g., Newtonian physics), which work well in the specific areas where they apply to 99.9% of the researched problems. Relativity, which was more general than Newtonian, worked and works in some of the 0.1% of the areas where Newtonian failed. So, relativity in those areas is proved. Period. However, there are still areas where relativity is not proved - and where it may well not work. In those areas (perhaps, 0.1% of the 0.1%), an even more inclusive theory might have to be developed - which would also have to be consistent with the proven results for the Newtonian and Einstinian "theories".

In short, science (like Wilf :)) requires rigour.

Upon reflection about this one:


from MikeF
Eventually, I'll graduate and go back to doing not thinking.

you are pulling my leg - right ?

MikeF
05-11-2009, 08:06 PM
That was simply a little stubborness slipping out. I'll probably end up either teaching or working in a collaborative group trying to solve difficult problems after graduation. If some of the project groups that I'm currently working with are fruitful, then we may determine better policies that the USG could employ. We'll see.

I won't be jumping out of airplanes anymore. Don't fret.:eek:

Mike

Presley Cannady
05-11-2009, 08:09 PM
And to tag on to jmm's point, STR and GTR describes all the physics Newton's laws of motions do, but also in excess of the limit where gravitation and/or acceleration is non-negligible or relative velocity approaches the speed of light. Quantum mechanics likewise describes all physics in the classical limit, but at its typical length scale arrives at results the continuous mathematics of classical motion can't describe. Even so, we continue to use all three where they are most useful even if they are inaccurate at some given scale of some given observable(s). This is even more evident in statistical mechanics, chemistry, biology, ecology and social sciences, where not only are you introducing stochastic models but often you're satisfied with models that predict for only a percentage of an accounted effect.

If Gourley's result is exciting, it's in that in confirms that some part of the behavior of war conforms to an elegant model like a power law. As it stands, you probably couldn't expect a great deal of accuracy in its boundary points--whatever shapes alpha, or however alpha evolves isn't well understood enough as evidenced by the bunch of "I don't knows" Gourley spat out when examining the Iraq insurgency in the context of this model.

Science is rigor, but more importantly it's estimation. An explanation that's useful doesn't simply fall to the way side because it can't predict all phenomena in its domain.

MikeF
05-11-2009, 08:11 PM
Whether or not alpha represents the structure of the insurgency in any way remains to be seen (and I can't even find the results of this research online, so it may be premature to say the least). It's possible this "theory" why alpha is stable around some point (2.5) may be no more than one working hypothesis amongst many. Gourley is coupling another unstated assumption, group dynamics, to this model in order to explain alpha and his talk completely skimped over that point.

The power law "works" because we intuit the probability of destructive events occurring decreasing with their destructiveness (nuclear terrorism on a Western target is harder and costlier than setting an IED in your own backyard). Everything else is a question of how it behaves in a scaling limit. The fact that it behaves like a power law at all means that it can only not be a power law asymptotically--some other term overwhelms the scaling exponent and breaks invariance--or the function is piece wise with the addition of more data.

From what I googled on Gourley, apparently he is working out in San Fran right now. I may contact him to see if he can share some more of his findings; however, if his team is analyzing a working hypothesis, then they might not want to share.

I was suprised that he submitted it to Ted, and even more suprised that they accepted it without any analysis.

IMO, Dr. Gordon McCormick (NPS Defense Analysis) could probably have presented a more thorough briefing.

Regardless, his presentation is sparking discussion amoungst practisioners and academics. That is a good thing.

v/r

Mike

Presley Cannady
05-11-2009, 08:20 PM
From what I googled on Gourley, apparently he is working out in San Fran right now. I may contact him to see if he can share some more of his findings; however, if his team is analyzing a working hypothesis, then they might not want to share.

I was suprised that he submitted it to Ted, and even more suprised that they accepted it without any analysis.

SWJ isn't set up to peer review work like this, I think, at least not on its own. Gourley's not the only one publicizing these results piecemeal. His team member Michael Spagat is also giving talks on the matter (hopefulyl in advance of something). I'm not surprised. I don't expect the weight of the material to be such that it would be challenging for review, so far the results don't contradict what has come out before, and to be honest I expect the end result to be what most interdisciplinary "research" teams put out: a huge TO-DO list ready made for a brand spanking new, regularly funded academic chair at some big league university.

NOTE: Gourley's not only all over youtube, but his Younoodle (http://younoodle.com/people/sean_gourley) page is higher ranked than his faculty one *and* he's all over Facebook and LinkedIn. This ain't a bad thing, but just an indicator of how early this research probably is.


IMO, Dr. Gordon McCormick (NPS Defense Analysis) could probably have presented a more thorough briefing.

Regardless, his presentation is sparking discussion amoungst practisioners and academics. That is a good thing.

This I find kind of disturbing, considering the key result was discovered almost half a century ago. What the hell have we been doing since? I mean it really feels like Gourley et. al. are shopping for new office space and maybe a graduate degree program, but why isn't there a whole field of Quantitative Conflict Studies out there?

Surferbeetle
05-11-2009, 08:23 PM
“exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?”

War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force.

From an irrigation standpoint it can be beneficial to think of the potential energy of water in terms of hydraulic head (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_head) or elevation...using this baseline analogy potential energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_energy) is seen as due to position in a gravitational field (E=mgh, SI units) while kinetic energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy) is a form of mechanical energy associated with movement or rotation (E =1/2mv2, E rotational= 1/2Iw2, SI units).

Larry Dunbar
05-11-2009, 08:56 PM
"So, I guess I come down more on Wilf's side of the ledger"

Well, I figured I had to start somewhere, so I thought I would just throw it all out there.

I have been told (not in exact terms) that metaphors are a practical way of crossing orientations. I am too old to be crossing into Wilf's side (boots on the ground, sort of thing) and there is no reason for him to cross into mine (whatever my orientation is in fact).

I have been trying to tie this in with quantum physics, which doesn't really help. One quantum physics scientist said, if you say you understand quantum physic, then you don't understand quantum physics. This leaves me at an unfair advantage.

I actually look at a military movement as a particle-wave, and use my understanding of a particle-wave or electromagnetic radiation, which could be wrong, as the model. The more I read about war and physics the more it looks like I am correct.

Of course to me, all a nuke is just an electromagnetic pulse, same thing as an electromagnetic wave, except the frequency (the number of attacks) is in the number of events instead of the length of wave (intensity, more deadly).

Steve the Planner
05-11-2009, 11:21 PM
A couple of decades ago in the planning/policy program at Johns Hopkins, there were several mandatory courses, two of which provided the perfect contrast. One was a kick-ass-take-names course in quantitative methods for planning and policy. The other was the Director's "special" course in planning and politics which, once a month, met in a private room at the Hopkins Club, to get whichever politician was in the most trouble into a private gathering with a supposed friendly audience to discuss his version of the story. After a few hours, the drinks set in and we got all the dirt. (Remember the drinking standards of past years?).

Somewhere between quantitative methods, politics, and human foibles and booze, we got a pretty good understanding of government planning and policy. The math is a good start, but hardly tells the story.

I just came off a "secondment" to UN's political team in Iraq. If only the disputed boundaries issues could have been reduced to math...

Steve

jmm99
05-12-2009, 01:46 AM
think like so (if it helps you individually, so much to the good):


from Larry
I actually look at a military movement as a particle-wave, and use my understanding of a particle-wave or electromagnetic radiation, which could be wrong, as the model. The more I read about war and physics the more it looks like I am correct.

But, I am also aware of the uncertainties and complexities of particle-wave theory (actually theories - and a compromise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation) between the theories to yield a kludge which will work in most cases). So, perhaps your metaphor will work across orientations - if the recipient of your metaphor can understand it; and if your metaphor is indeed correct in its own field (quantum mechanics).

Why not simply say a military movement looks like so (see attached for one of many possible examples); and explain it in terms of what actually happens, why that happens, and what the pluses and minuses of the options are ?

Hugh Everett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett), who was more than brilliant (but more than a bit eccentric), made the jump from theoretical math and quantum physics to defense modeling, with quite a bit of success.

Ron Humphrey
05-12-2009, 02:07 AM
Picture's worth a thousand manual's:eek::D

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 02:43 AM
I have been told (not in exact terms) that metaphors are a practical way of crossing orientations. I am too old to be crossing into Wilf's side (boots on the ground, sort of thing) and there is no reason for him to cross into mine (whatever my orientation is in fact).

Not sure about metaphors. Analogies are useful to a point, but generally break down when terminology is adopted piecemeal. Categories--essential mathematical relationships with applications in various fields--are useful and generally accurate, though formal, and help develop more robust analogies. I fear that military science literature has foregone this step in adopting concepts from other fields.


I have been trying to tie this in with quantum physics, which doesn't really help. One quantum physics scientist said, if you say you understand quantum physic, then you don't understand quantum physics. This leaves me at an unfair advantage.

I wouldn't take that if I were you. Truisms like that are infuriarating, not because they're accurate (this one is a little), but because they're damned unhelpful. True, no one "understands" quantum mechanics--if by that we mean how to completely frame its physical consequences. On the other hand, simply because there are five interpretations doesn't mean that each interpretation is equal, or that it's impossible to fix on the correct one. More importantly, regardless of the underlying physical intuition, you can understand the key results with little more than high school math. The non-relativistic wave equation is a sufficiently complete introduction to QM taught in freshmen chemistry classes in universities across the world.


I actually look at a military movement as a particle-wave, and use my understanding of a particle-wave or electromagnetic radiation, which could be wrong, as the model. The more I read about war and physics the more it looks like I am correct.

I assume you're talking about a massive particle when you say particle wave, though I'm not sure exactly how you're applying that to "military movement." As I read this, you're saying that such movement can be described by laws of motion or the mechanics of an oscillator. The value in framing the movement of men and materiel this way escapes me, but perhaps we need some more detail as to circumstances in which you apply this model.


Of course to me, all a nuke is just an electromagnetic pulse...

It's considerably more than that. Overpressure and heat in any explosion (in an atmosphere) is a convective process, not a radiative one.


...same thing as an electromagnetic wave, except the frequency (the number of attacks) is in the number of events instead of the length of wave (intensity, more deadly).

Still not following. The frequency of a wave is the product of its speed and the inverse of wavelength. Intensity is a function of frequency (or wavelength) for a given velocity. The power law explicitly diminishes in velocity as frequency increases, so intensity is not guaranteed to increase with it.

MikeF
05-12-2009, 02:59 AM
- Bounding onto an objective is much easier than trying to seal the AfPak border.

-I should have paid more attention in my physics class. Actually, I probably should have stayed awake.

-At the end of the debate, COL Gentile may prove to be correct.

Time to watch House and 24.

v/r

Mike

Ron Humphrey
05-12-2009, 03:15 AM
- Bounding onto an objective is much easier than trying to seal the AfPak border.

-I should have paid more attention in my physics class. Actually, I probably should have stayed awake.

-At the end of the debate, COL Gentile may prove to be correct.

Time to watch House and 24.

v/r

Mike

As to COL Gentile from what I remember I'm not sure many here ever said he wasn't right.

What's been cloudy has alway's been that in the end not only does the enemy get a vote but the HN does to and there's limits to what any counter-insurgent can do about that.

All you can do is set condition's the rest is up to them.
Gotta hand it to the man, solid as a rock when it comes to what he feels is right

Ken White
05-12-2009, 03:52 AM
Surferbeetle and I have a running battle on excessive metrication. I say most such efforts are excessive, he disagrees. Yesterday, he said:
"...note our world-renowned college educational system and until recently, our possession of the worlds strongest financial system. Our college system consistently explores the concepts of mathematical modeling and simulation in associate through graduate educational programs in business, engineering, finance, and manufacturing – all disciplines that are crucial to a nations ability to survive and thrive."It's a shame he couldn't say our world renowned educational system without the 'college' caveat. We used to have that, no caveats -- but then we got interested in processes instead of results...

I may be mistaken but I believe the reason we no longer have the worlds strongest financial system can be laid at the feet of two entities. The US Congress and political class who encouraged stupidity and the Financial whiz types -- who all used mathematical models to prove what they were doing was valid...

Ha also said:
This journey will take time, have setbacks, and generally be a PITA however when balanced against the adapt or die imperative it’s an easy choice to make.I'm dubious. I've watched too many war games, computerized and not, get manipulated and too many results that were unpalatable discarded. People don't play fair. Really messes things up, sometimes.

Mike F said:
"We ASSUMED that after we took over, we coulld hold elections, and little americans would emerge from the ashes. We assumed that we could undertake such a venture with minimal force and cost. We were wrong. Our planning was based off ideology, not reason and historical fact."I know that's what was said by many and I'm sure many who said that truly thought it -- but I'm personally convinced that it does not reflect why we went or the thinking of the decider and other quite senior folks.

At base level it was pure physics -- a reaction to the various force efforts applied to us over the entire period 1979-2001 to the brachial plexus of those who expressed their discontent in a violent manner. ;)

We don't want an empire and we won't have one (you can write that down). We just don't tolerate threats or continued pinpricks; when those two things loom, we go into the disruptive mode. Been doing it for over 200 years. Been hacking off the rest of the world by doing so for that two centuries plus. I doubt we'll stop. :cool:

JMM, as always comes in with a wise summation:
"Sometimes metaphors are useful to groups of people, as well as to the individual. But, they also introduce terminology which has to be explained - and which can simply clutter up the picture and actually retard mutual understanding."True. Combat is a simple art, really. It is a cognitive and an experiential skill and it is emphatically in execution (if not in its implements today) an art and not a science. It does not lend itself at all to metrication and hard science (other than a little geography) and every attempt I have seen to introduce such concepts has failed -- mostly because people are rather unpredictable at times.

Thus, I say again, when you feel the urge to apply numbers to any human activities and particularly the chaotic activities -- be careful...

Ken White
05-12-2009, 04:18 AM
...the fact remains to a degree of accuracy clusters of thinking human beings can be modeled successfully and have been for decades.Sure have. My issue is with your "degree of accuracy." Adequate for your trade perhaps -- in my former trade that 'degree of accuracy' can easily get you killed.
If that's the case, we're wasting a lot of money on pshrinks, term insurance, and advertising with absolutely zero discernible benefit.I'm unsure who constitutes your "we" but I do know that I'm not wasting any money on pshrinks. Or Term Insurance. As for advertising -- some success stories, some abject failures and even the success stories didn't get nearly everyone... ;)

If one's ad campaign doesn't work out, few to no lives are likely lost -- if one's war campaign doesn't work out, many lives and perhaps more will be lost.
"This I find kind of disturbing, considering the key result was discovered almost half a century ago. What the hell have we been doing since? I mean it really feels like Gourley et. al. are shopping for new office space and maybe a graduate degree program, but why isn't there a whole field of Quantitative Conflict Studies out there?"You are familiar with these guys? LINK (http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/)They and their founder have been at it since shortly after WW II.

They and others have tried the numerate approach to war for years. None of those attempts ever really took hold. I think perhaps there's a message in that... :wry:

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 04:33 AM
I may be mistaken but I believe the reason we no longer have the worlds strongest financial system can be laid at the feet of two entities. The US Congress and political class who encouraged stupidity and the Financial whiz types -- who all used mathematical models to prove what they were doing was valid...

First off, we should disabuse ourselves of the notion of a national financial system. CDOs and credit default swaps are global, hence the global financial crisis. Second, proprietary use of a single, public domain mathematical tool which, otherwise used in numerous applications, is only relevant given a very narrow set of circumstances , is the principle culprit for the risk miscalculation leading to the debt collapse in 2007-9. And by proprietary use, we can easily say misuse was the culprit--including bad inputs, faulty assumptions about the performance of some independent variables (the value of the underlying asset of the derivative, for example), etc. This doesn't mean there isn't a simple way to sum up the cause of this latest disaster, it just means that simple should also be specific.


Ha also said:I'm dubious. I've watched too many war games, computerized and not, get manipulated and too many results that were unpalatable discarded. People don't play fair. Really messes things up, sometimes.

Yet you can discern the manipulation, presumably on its face if you did so without need of deeper analysis. And that's the point. We can't simply use (or abuse) these models without scrutiny, and even in a hard to catch case (like the financial crisis) there's plenty of evidence of what went wrong and why--only too often after the fact. The moral of the story is you learn, improve the model, use it better in the future or discard it if necessary.


Thus, I say again, when you feel the urge to apply numbers to any human activities and particularly the chaotic activities -- be careful...

A good lesson, but one that assumes some value in using numbers in the first place.

William F. Owen
05-12-2009, 04:42 AM
If Gourley's result is exciting, it's in that in confirms that some part of the behavior of war conforms to an elegant model like a power law. As it stands, you probably couldn't expect a great deal of accuracy in its boundary points--whatever shapes alpha, or however alpha evolves isn't well understood enough as evidenced by the bunch of "I don't knows" Gourley spat out when examining the Iraq insurgency in the context of this model.
The idea that War or conflict might conform to an elegant model is pretty much a nail in the coffin of the concept. War simply does not work that way. What if he included data from WW1, or the Crimea? The data he uses is from 21st century insurgencies and civil wars - which are characterised by single murders and shootings. The whole thing fails the "so what" test.

I bet you'll find that the number of people killed per domestic hand-gun attacks is 0.75 world wide and has been for 100 years. - so what?


Science is rigor, but more importantly it's estimation. An explanation that's useful doesn't simply fall to the way side because it can't predict all phenomena in its domain.
- see my signature.

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 04:47 AM
Sure have. My issue is with your "degree of accuracy." Adequate for your trade perhaps -- in my former trade that 'degree of accuracy' can easily get you killed.

Agreed. So the question is whether or not the degree of accuracy in a quantitative model is more or less likely to get someone killed than not using it. In the medical profession--where life and death is equally, and probably more frequently, at question--the answer's obvious.


I'm unsure who constitutes your "we" but I do know that I'm not wasting any money on pshrinks. Or Term Insurance. As for advertising -- some success stories, some abject failures and even the success stories didn't get nearly everyone... ;)

Certainly, but the outliers--or even a sizable deviation under certain circumstances (not life threatening, to be sure)--doesn't overwhelm the value gained from predicting behavior in the aggregate. Optimization doesn't guarantee perfection, only a good bet that practice that considers it is better than practice that doesn't.


If one's ad campaign doesn't work out, few to no lives are likely lost -- if one's war campaign doesn't work out, many lives and perhaps more will be lost.You are familiar with these guys? LINK (http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/)They and their founder have been at it since shortly after WW II.

They and others have tried the numerate approach to war for years. None of those attempts ever really took hold. I think perhaps there's a message in that... :wry:

Don't get me wrong. I'm the first to say that there's no evidence that the power law Gourley et. al. have rediscovered will yield any valuable prescriptions. You can say the same about any number of aphorisms about violence--war is hell, whoever gets there with the mostest the firstest wins, guns don't kill people blah blah--all accurate and probably not all that helpful when faced with a real need to plan and execute.

On the other hand, you can plainly see the value in quantitative methods in force flow planning, bridging, navigation, decision trees, acquisitions (jokes go here), etc. These methods should and do prove their worth the same way tradition does--by being tested under specific conditions time and time again and under fire. We generalize their lessons at our own risk.

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 05:03 AM
The idea that War or conflict might conform to an elegant model is pretty much a nail in the coffin of the concept. War simply does not work that way. What if he included data from WW1, or the Crimea? The data he uses is from 21st century insurgencies and civil wars - which are characterised by single murders and shootings. The whole thing fails the "so what" test.

I hope these guys put their research up for scrutiny soon. Spagat's presentation (http://www.kent.ac.uk/politics/carc/research/papers/papers/spagatt.pdf) hints that they vary their conflict samples so widely that its a meta-analysis of anything from today's wars to Japanese invasion of Manchuria to Chicago Vice Lords beefing with the flavor of the month.

I don't expect war to conform to an elegant model, at least not a useful one. I'm not even sure individual classes of war we can identify would yield such a result. Almost all social science models are highly conditional, and if any overarching model exists--I seriously doubt it boils down to something as analytic as a power law.


I bet you'll find that the number of people killed per domestic hand-gun attacks is 0.75 world wide and has been for 100 years. - so what?

Gourley claims that the scaling constant (alpha in this case) should be derived from another set of tools in group dynamics, and that if things are left to themselves this should stabilize at around 2.59. Conceding truth to his claims regarding a mathematical pattern to warfare, I'd be more skeptical of Gourley's claims that in group dynamics exist methods methods to engineer alpha to achieve a desired result. Gourley himself is skeptical, as this is where his "I don't knows" crescendo.


- see my signature.

Well said. ;)

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 05:07 AM
We generalize their lessons at our own risk.

I should admit this is a weasel phrase. More often than I'd care to count, but not often enough to detract from the aggregate value gained, lessons drawn from quantitative methods applied to people are applicable only to the sample studied. You can have the most elegant model of conflicts from 1931 to 2009 and find out it has no predictive value whatsoever. I guess this is why so many evaluators will qualify their recommendations with pages long "provided that such and such is this and that..." preliminaries. Happens in every industry.

MikeF
05-12-2009, 05:13 AM
I know that's what was said by many and I'm sure many who said that truly thought it -- but I'm personally convinced that it does not reflect why we went or the thinking of the decider and other quite senior folks.

At base level it was pure physics -- a reaction to the various force efforts applied to us over the entire period 1979-2001 to the brachial plexus of those who expressed their discontent in a violent manner. ;)

We don't want an empire and we won't have one (you can write that down). We just don't tolerate threats or continued pinpricks; when those two things loom, we go into the disruptive mode. Been doing it for over 200 years. Been hacking off the rest of the world by doing so for that two centuries plus. I doubt we'll stop. :cool:

To be more accurate, I should state that is what I (not we) assumed back in 2003. Now, I'm trying to apply game theory with some psychology (not modeling and simulations) to hopefully give our commanders better means of determining when to intervene and what force to use and provide our policy makers better understanding as to what we can and cannot accomplish.

We'll see how it works.

v/r

Mike

Tom Odom
05-12-2009, 06:03 AM
“exactly what are vertical and horizontal forces?”

War has been defined by many descriptions, but it simply is the displacement of energy, from one orientation into another. This is the main reason the power-law distribution applies to war. There are two forms of energy inside every displacement, kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy has mostly a component of Vertical force, while potential energy has mostly a component of horizontal force. Together the vertical and horizontal forces move the displacement from potential to kinetic and back again. It works in a loop and that loop, to some, is called an OODA loop.

Vertical forces are the forces that the horizontal forces of a country are able to support. The horizontal force is the amount of force between you and I, which is growing. Actually, the horizontal force is the amount of force a society has between its past and future, but it is not always (never) figured in that way.

Force at a distance is the definition of energy. When the vertical force moves, the distance from one country to another, it is called kinetic energy. The amount of power, energy per second, a country can throw at another country depends on how much vertical force the horizontal force can support, @ the distance and over time.

My guess why the power-law distribution “works” in Iraq or any war is that Alpha describes the structure of the insurgency and that structure, in Iraq, represents the orientation on the other side of the power curve of the US, and to a degree the Iraqi Security Forces. The Data is not for a particular orientation (religious, warlords, tribes, or thugs) only that orientation opposing the new Orientation. I capitalized the last Orientation because it represents the second "O" in the OODA loop (Orientation is what a vertical force does after it Penetrates the Observed environment of another displacement; it Isolates the displacement into Orientations, isolation does not always mean: to kill).


Now that is as clear as proverbial mud. Perhaps some systems wonk may want to try and use it as it is confusing enough to sound intelligent.

Tom

Ken White
05-12-2009, 06:08 AM
"Agreed. So the question is whether or not the degree of accuracy in a quantitative model is more or less likely to get someone killed than not using it. In the medical profession--where life and death is equally, and probably more frequently, at question--the answer's obvious."My observation has been that the success rate of good intuitive commanders is about 75%; that of their more numerately inclined peers is about 35-40%. My observation has also been that Medical Doctors are Like Economists; if you don't like what one says, ask another. Had a Grandfather who was a Doctor. He contended after over 50 years of practicing medicine that it was more art than science.

My observation of the Medicos leads me to believe that their numbers probably would roughly co8incide with my combat commanders...
"...doesn't overwhelm the value gained from predicting behavior in the aggregate. Optimization doesn't guarantee perfection, only a good bet that practice that considers it is better than practice that doesn't."I agree with that for many actions and activites. I do not agree that it is correct when applied to warfare -- or Blackjack -- by most people. :wry:
"..blah blah--all accurate and probably not all that helpful when faced with a real need to plan and execute.Blah blah is never helpful in anything. Aphorisms and metaphors have their place. So do numbers and models. Warfare mostly is not one of those places.
On the other hand, you can plainly see the value in quantitative methods in force flow planning, bridging, navigation, decision trees, acquisitions (jokes go here), etc. These methods should and do prove their worth the same way tradition does--by being tested under specific conditions time and time again and under fire. We generalize their lessons at our own risk.Having undergone the pain of coping with 'force flow planning' on numerous occasions, I can tell you that it usually gets totally screwed up -- frequently but not always dues to human error -- and then a human has to unstick it. Bridging is an Engineering endeavor and obviously needs several skills to do it efficiently -- not so many are needed to do it effectively. I've seen a number of matrices and decision trees fail totally -- usually at some cost in pain and suffering. Acquisitions, as you say...:wry:

Actually, very few things are "tested under specific conditions time and time again and under fire." That's because almost every effort attempted under fire is subject to the vagaries and variances of the mission, the particular enemy at a given point and time, the terrain and the type or lack of vegetation thereon, the troops one has available (and even with the same troops exactly, time will affect their abilities and effectiveness), the time of year and of day as well as that available and in any situation, not just COIN but mid level or major war, civilian considerations (and that can include own as well as international political constraints, like Rules of Engagement, media coverage and such). Throw in human foibles and you have too many variables so you will build a model upon which you cannot rely above the 50% level -- I like my fights to have better odds and that can usually be arranged.

BTW, don't conflate tradition and experience -- or principle and application. ;)

William F. Owen
05-12-2009, 07:04 AM
Now that is as clear as proverbial mud. Perhaps some systems wonk may want to try and use it as it is confusing enough to sound intelligent.

Tom

Steady on Tom! We are agreeing so much recently that you are freaking me out ! :D

jmm99
05-12-2009, 07:05 AM
The attached attack was sand tabled and rehearsed for a couple of weeks. In the event, tactical bombing failed to dent Siegfried - so also div & regt arty & 4.2 mortars. Charlie (my dad's company) & an attached MG platoon from Dog took most of their casualties in the first hour from pre-registered Jerry arty & mortars.

So, Charlie stalled by the RR tracks, until a few guys took out the blocking pillbox - and a couple of platoon leaders put together a composite platoon which was at least able to provide Able & Baker with supporting fires. All of C's assault squads (the guys with explosives & flamethrowers) were lost to the Jerry barrage.

A & B assaulted as planned - and all pillboxes were reduced by day's end. So, 1/117 was the can opener that opened the gap for the rest of the 30ID and 2AD.

Are there mathematical models for the tip of the spear ?

Would they predict the casualties sustained ?

William F. Owen
05-12-2009, 10:21 AM
T
Are there mathematical models for the tip of the spear ?

Would they predict the casualties sustained ?

1. Very interesting example. Shake your Dad's hand for me (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/30/war-raf-hero-oliver-owen). I mean it.

2. To answer your question, no their are not, (that I am aware of) in terms of proven reliability. There are general approximations for certain conflicts at certain times, but that doesn't tell you much. The Soviets had extensive and comprehensive sets of data used for planning, but there is no way of knowing how accurate of useful they were.
A while ago I spoke to some old US Army Colonel who told me that some work done with modern simulations shows them to be generally accurate. - who knows? Personally I think it's an area with little merit in studying.

Tom Odom
05-12-2009, 11:02 AM
Are there mathematical models for the tip of the spear ?

Would they predict the casualties sustained ?

Mike,

Perhaps, perhaps not...

What they would not model was the courage and adaptability of C Company after its losses. The human element is the free radical.

Tom

jmm99
05-12-2009, 11:41 AM
I'll have to pass on this:


from Wilf
Shake you Dad's hand for me.

but someday I will. In the meantime, Charles Owen can do the honors. :)

Dad died in 1978 from his final heart attack, when a sliver of German metal (which couldn't be removed, at least back then) worked its way into his heart's nerve bundle.


from Tom
The human element is the free radical.

So very, very true.

Thanks guys,

Cheers

Mike

----------------------------
PS For those who might be interested in the larger picture (the northern wing of the Aachen envelopment) - which probably is more amenable to modeling, see this map (http://www.oldhickory30th.com/West%20Wall%20JPEG%20Oct%202%20to%207.jpg). The 1/117 attack sector (ca. 600m) is the most northern double arrow pattern in the top lefthand corner. My dad was hit (18 Oct) south of the town of Alsdorf in the southeast part of the map.

The Wehrmacht map, showing both the northern and southern (1ID) wings of the envelopment is here (http://www.oldhickory30th.com/Aachen%20Battle%20Map%20German.pdf). Patrols of the 30ID and 1ID met southwest of Wurselen - 16 Oct 1944.

Surferbeetle
05-12-2009, 03:11 PM
...at least for me :D



I may be mistaken but I believe the reason we no longer have the worlds strongest financial system can be laid at the feet of two entities. The US Congress and political class who encouraged stupidity and the Financial whiz types -- who all used mathematical models to prove what they were doing was valid...

Won't argue with respect to number one, but disagree in some aspects on number two. Using the old 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' I would modify this to say 'mathematical models don't ruin financial systems, people who use mathematical models improperly ruin financial systems'. Mathematical models can also be used to help build nations as our 13 plus trillion USD GDP can attest. You point however is taken, when ethics and morality are not consistently practiced by the majority of a nations leadership (financial or otherwise), trouble inevitably follows: see the endlessly fascinating history of Rome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire).


I'm dubious. I've watched too many war games, computerized and not, get manipulated and too many results that were unpalatable discarded. People don't play fair. Really messes things up, sometimes.

I also mentioned...


As with any methodology, advice derived from mathematical modeling and simulation does not give a leader a magic pass to ignore common sense nor is it to be feared as voodoo magic whose use will consign our souls to the lowest circles of hell.

...and have mentioned previously that I am a big believer in intuition as well the rigors of engineering and science. I enjoy winning and have no problems using whatever tool is handy in a fight; what I am trying to share is that we- The Army - need to get serious about mathematical models and simulations for the COIN fight and we have the people who can figure this one out. It's certainly not as tough as going to the moon but neither is it a cakewalk...and it will take time so we need to get cracking.

Some of the areas that I see that might be of benefit include derivatives of epidemiology/financial models for the 'health' of an AO. This could include wheat production, orchard production, agricultural water deliveries, employment rates, etc. There has to be a way to get Afghanis to devote more of their time to non-kinetic instead of kinetic activities...drain the swamp to use the Army vernacular. It's not our job to do this for them, lets teach them to fish rather than provide fish ;). Nor I am saying that using these methodologies/tools will allow freaking peace, harmony, and free-love to break out across the land/world. We just need to work on getting things down to an acceptable low roar among the populace while we work on getting our hands on the trouble makers (ala Homer and Bart but with less of the humor).

Backwards Observer
05-12-2009, 05:35 PM
Sorry to go off-topic, but sometimes it seems as if the skeptics get more than a whiff of crapshot from what some may perceive as the unfortunate, loose surface similarities between "coin koans" and beatnik metaphysics. To paraphrase unkindly for example: sometimes a surface might be a gap, or sometimes both or even neither...and sometimes it's the other way around...man! (beats coin bongo) This flirtation with the lava-lamp intangibles of LIC must strike some as tempting incoherency and inviting chaos, thus precipitating a threat of collapse.

Surferbeetle
05-12-2009, 06:24 PM
From Registan by Joshua Foust A Pragmatic Extrapolation from Limited Data (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/05/09/pragmatic-extrapolation-from-limited-data/)


Since 2006, that problem has only gotten worse. While Sherzad itself has a relatively high income (see page 3, pdf), Nangarhar as a whole has only become more violent in the years since Ms. Felbab-Brown wrote that op-ed. What we do know is the extremely erratic behavior of Nangarhar’s opium sector has contributed to economic instability in the province overall, and severe income swings (page 32, pdf). From the data on hand, it is likely that higher incomes—such as Sherzad District, where the Coalition just conducted a noteworthy eradication effort—correspond with opium production. According to the IMF, when Nangarhar province saw a huge drop in opium cultivation under Gul Agha Sherzai’s early tenure in 2005/6, province-wide GDP was about $1.3 billion (which was a big drop from the year before, when there was much more opium). The next year, 2006/7, when opium production spiked 285%, province-level GDP rose to $3.2 billion, only to fall the next year to $1.8 billion as the UNODC declared it poppy-free.

Now, none of this proves any sort of causation, and much of the analysis about current trends is based off that single data point at the start of this post. However, these are the limitations we must work with—there simply are not good, rigorous data sets about the opium market in Nangarhar. The tiny glimpses of it that we have, however, indicate that not only is Nangarhar not at all the model province some U.S. officials seem to want it to be, but that its governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, is far less effective and capable than people have given him credit for.

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 06:25 PM
My observation has been that the success rate of good intuitive commanders is about 75%; that of their more numerately inclined peers is about 35-40%. My observation has also been that Medical Doctors are Like Economists; if you don't like what one says, ask another. Had a Grandfather who was a Doctor. He contended after over 50 years of practicing medicine that it was more art than science.

At one point the medical profession was more art than science. Men generally also only lived until their late 40s and bacterial infections were considerably more fatal. And since little if any warfighting prescriptions following from quantitative modeling clearly contradict long experience, I'm not surprised to find that intuition performs so well. As for the performance of the more numerically inclined, I'd say this: the bean counter is not the model and visa versa.


My observation of the Medicos leads me to believe that their numbers probably would roughly co8incide with my combat commanders...I agree with that for many actions and activites. I do not agree that it is correct when applied to warfare -- or Blackjack -- by most people.

Most people don't understand the mathematics behind Blackjack. When they do, they make a book and a movie about it.


:wry:Blah blah is never helpful in anything. Aphorisms and metaphors have their place. So do numbers and models. Warfare mostly is not one of those places.Having undergone the pain of coping with 'force flow planning' on numerous occasions, I can tell you that it usually gets totally screwed up -- frequently but not always dues to human error -- and then a human has to unstick it. Bridging is an Engineering endeavor and obviously needs several skills to do it efficiently -- not so many are needed to do it effectively. I've seen a number of matrices and decision trees fail totally -- usually at some cost in pain and suffering. Acquisitions, as you say...:wry:

And yet for more than half a century modern warfare has embraced quantitative methods in all these fields and more. A fair assessment of the success math has in the field would compare the performance of one generation of warfighters to its predecessors.


Actually, very few things are "tested under specific conditions time and time again and under fire." That's because almost every effort attempted under fire is subject to the vagaries and variances of the mission, the particular enemy at a given point and time, the terrain and the type or lack of vegetation thereon, the troops one has available (and even with the same troops exactly, time will affect their abilities and effectiveness), the time of year and of day as well as that available and in any situation, not just COIN but mid level or major war, civilian considerations (and that can include own as well as international political constraints, like Rules of Engagement, media coverage and such). Throw in human foibles and you have too many variables so you will build a model upon which you cannot rely above the 50% level -- I like my fights to have better odds and that can usually be arranged.

Vagary and variance are terms of art in stochastic modeling. A model does not yield an analytically exact answer, it specifies a distribution of probabilities within a given domain. This tells us two things--one, models are highly conditional on their subject samples and two, any modeler risks discovering variance so wide that statistically significant relationships are impossible to identify. Readily conceded. The question is whether or not modelers are doomed to find only either statistically useless models or useful ones contrained to useless domains.

As for the number of variables, climate change models handle orders and orders of magnitude more variables than those you've listed, counted in econometric or broader military science. The number of inputs is irrelevant if techniques to crunch them exist.


BTW, don't conflate tradition and experience -- or principle and application. ;)

I don't on the latter, but on the former I see no difference. Neither tradition nor experience as terms demand unwavering adherence, simply deference and consideration.

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 06:31 PM
From Registan by Joshua Foust A Pragmatic Extrapolation from Limited Data (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/05/09/pragmatic-extrapolation-from-limited-data/)

A dirty secret in science. There is no way to "prove" causation. Causality is accepted as principle, and discarded only when evidence raises the possibility of acausal behavior. What we do instead is measure the confidence we have that a series of events is causal, and that is generally determined by measure the statistical significance of an action with a perceived result.

Rex Brynen
05-12-2009, 07:23 PM
A dirty secret in science. There is no way to "prove" causation. Causality is accepted as principle, and discarded only when evidence raises the possibility of acausal behavior. What we do instead is measure the confidence we have that a series of events is causal, and that is generally determined by measure the statistical significance of an action with a perceived result.


Damn, you mean cancer doesn't cause smoking? I feel so misled.

Ken White
05-12-2009, 08:55 PM
At one point the medical profession was more art than science.Because all the science merely provides mor information to fuel a better guess. Sometimes.
...the bean counter is not the model and visa versa.True but he often pushes his model in spite of knowing it's flaws -- pride of author or owner ship is a terrible thing. :D
And yet for more than half a century modern warfare has embraced quantitative methods in all these fields and more. A fair assessment of the success math has in the field would compare the performance of one generation of warfighters to its predecessors. I think if you give that few seconds thought and refresh your History cells, you may not really want to go there. Put another way, how well has that worked out for us?
The question is whether or not modelers are doomed to find only either statistically useless models or useful ones contrained to useless domains.You do know that all of our disagreement really revolves around the unconstrained application of metrics, matrices and modeling -- the three 'M's (Good copy, bad practices for warfare) to war. I have no quarrel with the utility and even necessity in many fields -- to include building weapons and supporting war fighters. I do not urge they not be used in actual combat operations but do urge great caution in that use.
I don't on the latter, but on the former I see no difference. Neither tradition nor experience as terms demand unwavering adherence, simply deference and consideration.True -- and exactly the same conditions apply to math and models.

What all you believers forget is that humans presented with a bunch of numbers that prove something tend to accept them because that means they don't have to think about the problem. That's the danger that most math centric folks do not think about much less care to mention or guard against...

I go back to what I said earlier. Nothing you've said indicates that I was incorrect:

""human interaction will always show patterns -- and different modelers will draw different patterns from the same data. You cannot put people in boxes IMO; you have to deal with the person or group as they are and as they constantly shift and change.""

You have essentially said that's correct. :cool:

""Well, you can put 'em in boxes and rely on trends, I suppose. Seen a lot of folks do some fascinating variations on that. None successfully, as I recall...""

I have watched the US Army try many numerate / modeling efforts and been the victim of attempts to apply templates, matrices and decision trees to combat -- all failed miserably. Whether the model was wrong or through human error in application, they are dangerous.

I go back to my first comment on this thread (which was not don't use them but) -- "People and numbers don't mix well."

Presley Cannady
05-12-2009, 10:53 PM
Because all the science merely provides mor information to fuel a better guess.

Science can certainly crunch more information into knowledge by virtue of its formalism, but it also can do so more rigorously due to its predilection for continuous testing, integration and evolution.


Sometimes.True but he often pushes his model in spite of knowing it's flaws -- pride of author or owner ship is a terrible thing. :D

Falling in love with your own research is dangerous, definitely, but more often than not we're talking about people applying other people's innovations incorrectly--often disasterously. Let's take David Li--the Chinese national who first thought to price CDOs using Gaussian copulas. He's on record as early as 2005 pointing out that financiers who applied it did so despite the fact the model lacked theoretical grounding for credit portfolios. We can't even blame the model in this case, because it's unclear as to whether the correlation itself or the assumptions folks at Lehman and Citigroup made about their credit portfolios is at fault. Either way, we should point out that the Gaussian copula is one in literally tens of thousands of models in hundreds of distribution classes that financiers use every day, and even though Lehman and Citigroup mined the mathematical trove they had very different, proprietary implementations at their disposal.


I think if you give that few seconds thought and refresh your History cells, you may not really want to go there. Put another way, how well has that worked out for us?You do know that all of our disagreement really revolves around the unconstrained application of metrics, matrices and modeling -- the three 'M's (Good copy, bad practices for warfare) to war. I have no quarrel with the utility and even necessity in many fields -- to include building weapons and supporting war fighters. I do not urge they not be used in actual combat operations but do urge great caution in that use.True -- and exactly the same conditions apply to math and models.

If that's the case, I don't think we have a disagreement here. I'd place more emphasis on the value of investigating the use of combat models, but I do not urge any particular set of models or sign off on their prescriptions. More to the topic's point, I do not see any value whatsoever yet in Gourley's work. Noting that war has aggregate behavior described by a power law is a fancy way of saying (in general) "big explosions are expensive, little ones not so much." I think your response would be "duh."


What all you believers forget is that humans presented with a bunch of numbers that prove something tend to accept them because that means they don't have to think about the problem. That's the danger that most math centric folks do not think about much less care to mention or guard against...

I think that's a risk we take whenever we give up our faculties to authority, whether to math or to experience. To take a model and blindly apply it, without examining the math, its underlying assumptions, the facts on the ground, etc., is about as insane as trusting in the experience of someone simply because somebody told you he was good. Using a model within its proper domain, cognizant of its limitations, reasonably confident that you've fed it all the facts it needs to compute, is akin to (mis)trusting the experience of someone you've seen work with your own eyes. Science doesn't spare you judiciousness, it's only supposed to support it.


I go back to what I said earlier. Nothing you've said indicates that I was incorrect:

""human interaction will always show patterns -- and different modelers will draw different patterns from the same data. You cannot put people in boxes IMO; you have to deal with the person or group as they are and as they constantly shift and change.""

You have essentially said that's correct. :cool:

Have to be careful here, because I do strongly disagree with that statement. We've agreed that using models carries risks, especially when it concerns improperly apply them. I do not, however, agree that modelers arrive at different conclusions based on the same data. That's not a matter of faith, it's a mathematical fact. Given some data, there's a finite number of functions describing them. Those functions have to be homomorphic. If they weren't, then the data underlying them has to be different. That the data concerns human behavior is irrelevant.

Furthermore, I do believe (or should say I have no reason to disbelieve the notion that) human behavior can be quantified. I don't believe in universal quantification, or even that there's a general rule that models can transform into one another. The present evidence suggests that models describing various bits and pieces of human behavior at any scale should be various and highly conditional. They will almost certainly be probabilistic. This is not a problem for me.


""Well, you can put 'em in boxes and rely on trends, I suppose. Seen a lot of folks do some fascinating variations on that. None successfully, as I recall...""

I have watched the US Army try many numerate / modeling efforts and been the victim of attempts to apply templates, matrices and decision trees to combat -- all failed miserably. Whether the model was wrong or through human error in application, they are dangerous.

Would you say this was the case at all scales of combat? And what time frame are we talking about for these observations? I was under the impression the modeling's been used fairly frequently in campaign analysis in recent decades. I'm not privy to the results of exercises, and data on conventional land-air operations is infrequent.


I go back to my first comment on this thread (which was not don't use them but) -- "People and numbers don't mix well."

I don't disagree with any particular point you've made, due either to the obvious power behind it or admitted lack of knowledge (I have no combat experience and haven't even the benefit of others' experience outside of this forum). But the general aphorism that "people and numbers" don't mix well is disproven, once again, by a most obvious example: the medical profession.

Ken White
05-12-2009, 11:32 PM
Falling in love with your own research is dangerous, definitely, but more often than not we're talking about people applying other people's innovations incorrectly--often disasterously...
I think that's a risk we take whenever we give up our faculties to authority, whether to math or to experience. To take a model and blindly apply it, without examining the math, its underlying assumptions, the facts on the ground, etc., is about as insane as trusting in the experience of someone simply because somebody told you he was good...Therin lies the rub as they say...

In war -- not just in combat but in preparation as well -- the skills to do that rudimentary analysis may not be in the right place at the right time. Time will always be detrimental to a reasoned analysis. I totally agree that the most common problem is misapplication of data or models but my point is that war will force such errors far more often than not. Therefor considerable caution in their development and use should be taken -- and it is not...
I do not, however, agree that modelers arrive at different conclusions based on the same data. That's not a matter of faith, it's a mathematical fact. Given some data, there's a finite number of functions describing them. Those functions have to be homomorphic. If they weren't, then the data underlying them has to be different. That the data concerns human behavior is irrelevant.Ah yes, I'm reminded of the famous Lancet study of Iraqi deaths in the war...

Not precisley the same thing but misuse of numbers is not unknown, deliberate or inadvertant. Trust but verify is good -- if you have time...

The problem, BTW, with that study was impeccable math was skewed terribly by very poor and dishonest data collection and thus GIGO occurred.
Furthermore, I do believe (or should say I have no reason to disbelieve the notion that) human behavior can be quantified. ... They will almost certainly be probabilistic. This is not a problem for me.Understand and agree but it can create problems with the carelessly accepting and less numerate or aware.
Would you say this was the case at all scales of combat? And what time frame are we talking about for these observations? I was under the impression the modeling's been used fairly frequently in campaign analysis in recent decades. I'm not privy to the results of exercises, and data on conventional land-air operations is infrequent.Up to the operational level for a great many, for virtually all at Tactical levels up to and including Division. All during the period 1949 until I retired in 1995 for the second time.
But the general aphorism that "people and numbers" don't mix well is disproven, once again, by a most obvious example: the medical profession.Heh. We are two modelers presented roughly the same data and arriving at different conclusions. ;)

Presley Cannady
05-13-2009, 02:09 AM
Therin lies the rub as they say...

In war -- not just in combat but in preparation as well -- the skills to do that rudimentary analysis may not be in the right place at the right time. Time will always be detrimental to a reasoned analysis. I totally agree that the most common problem is misapplication of data or models but my point is that war will force such errors far more often than not. Therefor considerable caution in their development and use should be taken -- and it is not...

I wouldn't go that far. Combat computation is certainly not the norm at the infantry company scale, but it's made its way to the battalion level. It's applications in the Air Force and Navy stretch back to almost immediately after the end of World War II. Nor is modeling static. Both Navy and Air Force (don't know about Army or the Corps) have dozens of active programs refining and when necessary replacing tools already in the field.


Ah yes, I'm reminded of the famous Lancet study of Iraqi deaths in the war...Not precisley the same thing but misuse of numbers is not unknown, deliberate or inadvertant. Trust but verify is good -- if you have time...The problem, BTW, with that study was impeccable math was skewed terribly by very poor and dishonest data collection and thus GIGO occurred.


Setting aside the politics surrounding it, both Lancet studies were severely criticized on the merits. For one, the cluster size was very small compared to say the UN household survey ostensibly studying the same issue; the two reports were off by an order of magnitude. Therefore, there is no conclusive epidemiology about excess mortality due to combat, let alone due to Coalition arms. This is not a criticism of modeling, but in fact a virtue of it. Being able to demonstrate sensitivity to inputs by which we can consider or disregard specific models is something to be desired. I feel this is similar to the "plans v. planning" distinction.

And there's always time. You don't suffer from not pushing a model into service before it matures, you just don't gain any benefit from it. No need crying over what you simply don't have.

Finally, models aren't alone or even particularly special in their vulnerability to garbage input. A case has been made, in this forum no doubt, that collection, dissemination, and acceptance by the stakeholders based on no modeling whatsoever contributed to what many view as a misadventure in Iraq.


Understand and agree but it can create problems with the carelessly accepting and less numerate or aware.Up to the operational level for a great many, for virtually all at Tactical levels up to and including Division. All during the period 1949 until I retired in 1995 for the second time.Heh. We are two modelers presented roughly the same data and arriving at different conclusions. ;)

Ah, but that data is sampled, and that's the key word. If you have a dataset that includes say the explosive tonnage of munitions expended and I have one that simply goes by the weight, our data sets are inevitably different. If that's the only difference, we'll find our results parallel but differ in magnitude. We can't even guarantee that if our collection is littered with completely unrelated classes of observables. Case in point, the Lancet studies v. the UN survey.

1949 to 1995? Jesus. Do they throw in frequent flier miles for the second time around?

Ken White
05-13-2009, 04:35 AM
I wouldn't go that far. Combat computation is certainly not the norm at the infantry company scale...Having spent most of my time from 1966 on above Company level and all after 1970 above Brigade, I'm well aware of that. I'm also aware that most are of marginal utility. I would say useless but there are Commanders who like numbers so they're handy to placate those guys.
And there's always time. You don't suffer from not pushing a model into service before it matures, you just don't gain any benefit from it. No need crying over what you simply don't have.no one is crying but the time for the people that will use your model in combat to give it scrutiny before application to insure they understand what it shows is often not available. No amount of peacetime or rear area modeling can be reliably used in combat without thorough understanding of what is to be done -- time to get that knowledge embedded often will not exist.
Finally, models aren't alone or even particularly special in their vulnerability to garbage input. A case has been made, in this forum no doubt, that collection, dissemination, and acceptance by the stakeholders based on no modeling whatsoever contributed to what many view as a misadventure in Iraq.Knowing the penchant of many in high places, I'm dubious but honestly don't know. I would characterize Iraq not as a misadventure but a as a necessary but regrettably flawed operation, a flawed effort that was predicated on several iterations of a computer modeled war game...
Ah, but that data is sampled{/quote]Of course it is -- as is most all data. :D [quote]1949 to 1995? Jesus. Do they throw in frequent flier miles for the second time around?Sure but Federal employees have to turn 'em in... ;)

Larry Dunbar
05-13-2009, 06:52 AM
The power law explicitly diminishes in velocity as frequency increases, so intensity is not guaranteed to increase with it.

Thanks for the heads-up. I was only able to take two terms of physic, the first and last of a three term set. So I studied an AC wave before I studied a Single Harmonic Motion. I went back and read this stuff, but it looks like I missed the basics. I think the math is the same, but way easier to visualize. Thanks again. Maybe later I can come up with some terminology that will "Hook" this all together.

Just a guess, I think the highest intensity will be where the velocity is zero, acceleration is max, and the displacement I am not sure of. I guess the highest intensity is when it is only a potential displacement of very high amplitude, which I suppose means it can be positive or negative.

Larry Dunbar
05-14-2009, 07:26 PM
Thanks for the heads-up.
Let me show you.

(from my last post) of the attacks is [due to the changing of the orientation, (see this is whats going on. The US military orientation would not have allowed this to happen. It probably happened because the woman was disguised as one of the ISF’s mom, how hard would that be? In fact, it may have been his mom. The enemy [insurgency] is adaptive and may have found the ISF weakness. It may be as Sean said, the power curve is going up. Of course that is a bunch of what ifs.), from the US to Iraqi force fighting in Iraq. The brigade’s leaders screwed-up. Do we sanction or dismiss these leaders? NO! If they are still alive, I don’t think they will make the same mistake twice, if they have been trained by the US military. (http://larrydunbar.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/concerns-mount-on-preparedness-of-iraq’s-forces-nytimes-com/)

jmm99
05-14-2009, 07:53 PM
failed to show me; but I did get "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria." :confused:

But, necessity, etc., I did find the Times article discussion on your blog here (http://larrydunbar.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/concerns-mount-on-preparedness-of-iraq%e2%80%99s-forces-nytimes-com/).

Ken White
05-14-2009, 08:36 PM
I too read the Blog piece and I'm unsure what you're trying to say...:confused:

Larry Dunbar
05-14-2009, 08:54 PM
I too read the Blog piece and I'm unsure what you're trying to say...:confused:

I am not trying to say too much here, only that the power curve is moving up as Sean says; the insurgency is adapting, the structure is changing and it, perhaps, has found a way to get at the ISF, that would not work on the US military.

The Times is open-source information after all, and I was just trying to prove that its information is related to Sean's, not that I was correct. If Sean's data is bogus, there doesn't have to be anymore discussion ablout it.

But thanks for trying.

Larry Dunbar
05-14-2009, 09:51 PM
failed to show me; but I did get "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria." :confused:.

Well, I am probably not a welcomed or wanted post on here. It is hard to judge something you don't understand. It probably is better to vet the link first, thanks.

Ken White
05-14-2009, 10:34 PM
may not get overly effusive but we're generally wlecoming; all osrts of very diverse folks stop by here and all are welcome.

I'm just not sure what you're trying to do and I say that not to give you a hard time but to find out what you're effort or point is. Probably my fault, i'm old... :wry:

Larry Dunbar
05-14-2009, 11:21 PM
may not get overly effusive but we're generally wlecoming; all osrts of very diverse folks stop by here and all are welcome.

I'm just not sure what you're trying to do and I say that not to give you a hard time but to find out what you're effort or point is. Probably my fault, i'm old... :wry:

It's just that I have been put under protocol before. You should try and call 135 setting republican members of congress f**king cowards for voting "present" when the time came to vote for funding the military. What you find is this (http://connectinginconversation.org/larrydunbar/). If that link doesn't work for you, all it shows is advertizing. I have to admit the posting was very inflammatory and when my rage went away I was going to put it on "private" settings, but I wasn't allowed to.

I don't know if I really have a point, you either get it or you don't. I am also old and I am not sure "wry" , but a bit of an A-hole. So don't feel bad, I don't even see an emoticon for that.

Ken White
05-15-2009, 01:09 AM
being put under protocol means but I'm guessing you mean that someone on a board tried to or did shut you down. People have been shut down here but as long as one follows the posting rules, stays civil, watches language and doesn't try to plunk an own Blog (Other than here: LINK (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=62799) or very occasionally in a thread) one isn't likely to get proscribed or jumped on.

My wife will tell you that I can out a$$ ho!e anyone anf if you're less than 75, you aren't old. :wry:

As for grumpy, that's me -- but I don't let the stupidity, venality and idiocy that is Congress mess up my day. I've been watching those idiots for over 60 years and every time I think they've done the dumbest thing in the world, they come up with something new -- and worse. I pretty much try to ignore them, I do totally ignore the punditocracy and I don't visit the political blogs because all I'll do is get hacked off. Life's too short... ;)

jmm99
05-15-2009, 01:36 AM
My post simply stated that your massive (1 para) hyperlink led to an error message - "Sorry, no posts matched your criteria." - which confused me.

I found the correct url by backspacing to your blog root and going to your particular post. That was my message. Period.

PS: I now notice that the 1-para hyperlink has been fixed, since the time I first punched it 5 hours ago.

Presley Cannady
07-06-2009, 04:20 PM
Took me a while to dig this up before I figured that Gourley was probably more of the evangelist than an actual investigator and author. Anyway's, here's the preprint for the actual research (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0605035). Comments later.

A summary (http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200611/backpage.cfm).

The CERAC datasets (http://www.cerac.org.co/datasets.htm) studied.

William F. Owen
07-06-2009, 04:38 PM
Took me a while to dig this up before I figured that Gourley was probably more of the evangelist than an actual investigator and author. Anyway's, here's the preprint for the actual research (http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/physics/0605035).


different conflict arenas currently feature a common type of enemy, i.e. the various insurgent forces are beginning to operate in a similar way regardless of their underlying ideologies, motivations and the terrain in which they operate.

Is this guy serious? Of course convergence occurs. It's a well explained and well noted aspect of all warfare. Based on the above, a bit of military history would have saved him a lot of work!

Presley Cannady
07-06-2009, 11:35 PM
Is this guy serious? Of course convergence occurs. It's a well explained and well noted aspect of all warfare. Based on the above, a bit of military history would have saved him a lot of work!

Not to jump to the defense, but the authors aren't trying to prove convergence. They're offering the fact of convergence as a leg to some theoretical explanation for power law they discovered. For that matter, for the power-law to hold, convergence in capability and method are probably essential, as is the other point made about the relative difference in capability between insurgent and counter-insurgent. Also likely essential, but unstated by the authors, is a lack of innovation with real battlefield effect by insurgents (or at least effect in terms of casualties). The pre-1946 datasets reviewed found no such mathematical relationship between casualties and frequencies of attacks for the limited set of major wars they covered prior to 1946. I wonder why that is.

What I find disappointing is that Gourley essentially represented this research to people as a stepping stone to predicting when and where attacks may occur. That's not the case. This research simply finds that more brutal, and presumably more difficult to pull off, attacks occur less frequently than less brutal ones, and that the relationship between brutality and frequency is a power law with an exponent of 2.5. That "discovery" might play a role when coupled with the future research the authors promise to do (as soon as they get funding, I'm sure), and may synthesize with work already done. But as it stands now, all we have is a neat, probably accurate, but utterly useless mathematical fact to throw around.

Larry Dunbar
07-07-2009, 01:13 AM
Not to jump to the defense, but the authors aren't trying to prove convergence.


I agree with you completely on this point. The author is not trying to prove convergence.


What I find disappointing is that Gourley essentially represented this research to people as a stepping stone to predicting when and where attacks may occur. That's not the case.

I didn't get the impression Gourley was representing this research in this way, but I agree that this is not the case. The insurgency will converge and fragment according to the force applied by the incumbent and the resilience of the insurgency (its ability to adapt). However, the direction of the slope (negative) doesn't change unless the structure of the insurgency changes, and I think that is what Gourley was getting at. The slope turned positive, which indicates a change in structure.

I think an insurgency naturally adapts as it moves up or down he slope, but it should not change in structure. Structure is the result of the horizontal and vertical forces inside the insurgency. Because the forces that create a structure involve people, they don't change easily. However, people adapt easily to an environment, and that is what changes as they converge or fragment, up or down, at the 2.5 slope in the negative direction.

Gourley asks what is changing in the structure of the insurgency, because the slope is becoming positive. My guess is the insurgency is changing as the incumbents change. As the US moves out of the cities the insurgency is changing in structure, to gain advantage over the new structure of the incumbents. The insurgents are not adapting to the force being applied, they are adapting to the new structure of the incumbents. I think the insurgency knows how to fight this new incumbency, and win. They are simply putting a new structure in place of the old, as the slope turns positive instead of negative.

War is usually between brothers as the weaker tries to negotiate from a position of strength.

“Between 1945 and 1999, about 3.33 million battle deaths occurred in the 25 interstate wars that killed at least 1000 and had at least 100 dead on each side. These wars involved just 25 states that suffered casualties of at least 1000, and had a median duration of not quite 3 months. By contrast, in the same period there were roughly 122 civil wars that killed at least 1000. A conservative estimate of the total dead as a direct result of these conflicts is 16.2 million, five times the interstate toll.”

Via: http://www.yale.edu/irspeakers/Fearon.pdf

Surferbeetle
12-23-2009, 07:25 AM
The website Mathematics of War (http://mathematicsofwar.com/) (H/T to Zenpundit)


Quantitative analysis of conflict is a relatively new discipline that combines data collection, statistical analysis and modeling to understand war and inform political strategy. Our research group brings together an interdisciplinary group of physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists and political economists to use numbers and theoretical models to understand war. If you’re interested in joining the project or collaborating on future research get in touch with us here

Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency (http://mathematicsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/WarEcologyNature-2.pdf) by Juan Camilo Bohorquez1, Sean Gourley2, Alexander R. Dixon3, Michael Spagat4 & Neil F. Johnson2

Also posted in the 462, 911-914 (17 December 2009) issue of the science periodical Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7275//full/nature08631.html)


Here we show that the sizes and timing of violent events within different insurgent conflicts exhibit remarkable similarities. We propose a unified model of human insurgency which reproduces these commonalities, and explains conflict-specific variations quantitatively in terms of underlying rules-of engagement. Our model treats each insurgent population as an ecology of dynamically evolving, self-organized groups following common decision-making processes. Our model is consistent with several recent hypotheses concerning modern insurgency18–20, is robust to many generalizations21, and establishes a quantitative connection between human insurgency, global terrorism10 and ecology13–17, 22, 23.