Mathematical logic of terrorist attacks

American scientists have discovered a mathematical pattern in world terrorism, namely, the dependence of the number of victims in each particular attack on the total frequency of terrorist attacks, Nature writes . The value of α in the power dependence p (x) ≈ x ^-α was calculated from the results of the statistical data of nine guerrilla wars (in our time, the guerrilla attack is called a terrorist act). Alpha reflects the degree of aggressiveness and is surprisingly stable in many wars (about 2.5).



That is, in a guerrilla war, an attack with ten casualties is 316 times more likely than an attack with a hundred casualties (316 = 10 ^2.5 ).

This universal law allows to unite all guerrilla wars in the history of mankind into a single formula.
')


Although the scale of war can be located to the left or to the right of the average value, but all together they constitute a single overall picture. As one of the authors noted, this is a general formula for collective violence in human society. That is, 2.5 is a kind of constant embedded in our genes.

via slashdot