Abstract
STATISTICS of wars have been collected from the whole world for the 120 years beginning with A.D. 1820. Attention was directed to the number of nations, or other large belligerent groups, on each side of any war. Accordingly, wars were classified as 1 group versus 1 group, or as 2 versus 1, or as 2 versus 2, and in general as r versus s. The number of wars of each of these types was counted. The result was a fairly regular statistical distribution, having a peculiar shape. Among a total of 91 wars there were 42 of the type ‘1 versus 1’, 24 of the type ‘2 versus 1’, and not more than five wars of any one more complicated type. The simplest type of encounter was the most frequent.
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RICHARDSON, L. Chaos, International and Inter-molecular. Nature 158, 135 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158135b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158135b0
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