Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war

http://www.ted.com By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war -- and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10


Follow us on Twitter
http://www.twitter.com/tednews

Checkout our Facebook page for TED exclusives
https://www.facebook.com/TED

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• TEDTalks
• TED
• talks
• Sean Gourley
• mathematics
• war
• math
• conflict
• peace
• news
• government
• problems
• politics
• political
• military
• ending war
• probability
• physics
• statistics
• resolution
• graph
• constant
• opensource
• open source
• NGO
• patterns
• trends
• socioeconomic problems
• Iraq
• Colombia
• Afghanistan
• Senegal
• mathematical distribution
• predict
• organization
• insurgency
• organizational structure
• coalescence
• fragmentation
• cooperation
• rebel
• rebellion
• insurgent

[TDeltablues]

Not to slight Mr. Gourley, he is clearly an intelligent man..

..but that being the case, I must point out the inconsistency at 0:50..why would a clearly intelligent, well spoken man watch Fox News?!?!

[Johnnydbad]

Because this falls under the TED program, wherein experts in certain fields explain and present their (innovative) ideas.

This didn't explain anything, it was more like a DOD staff presentation than anything else.

Some people are just dissapointed in this presentation and they are allowed to express this.

[thebestsumoeva]

All he has discovered is the probability of a large successful attack is lower than the probability of a small less successful attack. It is peculiar how this data does seem to follow a power law though.

[chas6641]

in my limited intelligence...a is simply means STAY AWAY from other peoples lives, mind your own life, Iraq or any other nation can live peacefully on their own way and culture, it is only messed up when US or GB steps in in the name of BS diplomacy or WTF freedom or terrorism they are talking about. A meAns simply leAve them Alone And there will be no wAr...

[akallabror]

He literally made no sense. No sense at all.

[GypsyLeah]

I knew there was a reason I liked Data Mining.

[DeathAdder187]

@theycallmefibb >>implying Fox = news source

Ahah.

[platinumare]

@TDeltablues Why not??

[xjustamem0ryx]

western intelligence is an oxy moron.

[eoineoineoin]

@TDeltablues I watch Fox News to fınd out what the rıght wıng ın Amerıca thınks. I don't lıke theır opınıons but ıt's worthwhıle knowıng what they are. A recent one ıs that they (Glenn Beck) thınk lıvıng under a dıctator that commıts genocıde ıs preferable to a socıalıst democracy.

[kdcruz75]

it tkaes time for western intelligence to create fund and organise a black ops operation fighting against the main forces..

whther it be the drugs war in south amerika or the 'religious' wars in the middleeast..

[maumac09]

@ atomisten i think the point is that a group of nerds got together and found a mathematical coincidence to a larger world problem and would like some credit for it :P