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Thread: Mathematics of War

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    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? LINKThey 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...
    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.
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    Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
    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 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.
    PH Cannady
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    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    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.
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    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default Well said Ken.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post

    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.
    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

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Larry Dunbar View Post
    “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

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    "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.
    "..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...

    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.

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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom View Post
    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 !
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Default Mathematical models & reality

    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 ?
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    Council Member William F. Owen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    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. 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.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 05-12-2009 at 03:07 PM. Reason: Spelling.
    Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"

    - The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
    - If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
    Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition

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    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
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    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

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    Default For the present ...

    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. 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. Patrols of the 30ID and 1ID met southwest of Wurselen - 16 Oct 1944.
    Last edited by jmm99; 05-12-2009 at 12:03 PM. Reason: add PS and links

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    Default It's less a battle and more of a fun educational process..

    ...at least for me

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    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...

    Quote Originally Posted by Surferbeetle View Post
    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).
    Sapere Aude

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    Default non-duality and hard-power hippies

    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.
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    Default Gotta have more coin-bongo, or is it cowbell...

    From Registan by Joshua Foust A 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.
    Sapere Aude

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    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.
    PH Cannady
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    Quote Originally Posted by Surferbeetle View Post
    From Registan by Joshua Foust A 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.
    PH Cannady
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    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    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.
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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default It still is...

    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    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.
    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.

    ""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."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    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.
    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.
    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.
    Last edited by Presley Cannady; 05-12-2009 at 10:55 PM.
    PH Cannady
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  20. #60
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Thanks for the response.

    Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
    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.

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