Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
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.

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...
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.