Blog post archive

Wednesday, 6 Jun 2018
The Long Peace Most Likely Began during the Vietnam War

Two statisticians at the University of Oslo have blown a hole in Steven Pinker’s famous theory that the Long Peace dates from 1945 onwards. But Pinker is excited about the new calculations, which suggest that this more peaceful period instead began in 1965 – during the Vietnam War. In his ...

Thursday, 1 Feb 2018
Towards a More Peaceful World [insert '!' or '?' here]

Each war is dramatic and horrible and warrants a hundred history books and a thousand songs of sorrow. But it also provides one more data point, along with relevant covariates, to the collection of Tolstoyan war-and-peace data-bases, and statisticians may study the evolution of alleged decreasing violence levels over time. ...

Tuesday, 30 Jan 2018
From Failure to Victory - 50 Years since the Tet Offensive

The Vietnam War remains the deadliest war the world has seen since 1945. The Tet offensive was a turning point. For the US, it took away the belief that victory was possible. All that was left was to find a way out. Fifty years ago, in the middle of the ...