Study settles the score on whether the modern world is less violent


Date:
June 16, 2020
Source:
University of York
Summary:
A study by mathematicians has used new techniques to address the
long- running debate over whether battle deaths have been declining
globally since the end of the Second World War.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== While the first half of the twentieth century marked a period of
extraordinary violence, the world has become more peaceful in the past
30 years, a new statistical analysis of the global death toll from
war suggests.


==========================================================================
The study, by mathematicians at the University of York, used new
techniques to address the long-running debate over whether battle deaths
have been declining globally since the end of the Second World War.

The team carried out a "change point" analysis on publically available
data sets tracking the number of global deaths in battle since the
Napoleonic wars.

The researchers fine-tuned an algorithm to accurately detect points in the
data where there are changes in the sizes of wars. The results suggest
that, in addition to a distinct beginning and end to the unprecedented bloodshed of 1910-1950, there was another abrupt shift towards a greater
level of peace in the early 1990s.

Co-author of the study, Professor Niall MacKay from the Department of Mathematics at the University of York, said: "The question of whether
the world today has become more or less dangerous is a hotly debated
issue among historians. Our study attempts to address this question
purely from the perspective of what the data can tell us.

"The change for the better our analysis detected over the past 30 years
may be due to peace keeping work by global organisations like the UN and increased collaboration and cooperation between nations." The authors
of the study also identified another point of change in the 1830s.

The historical reasons for this change are less clear, but with the
world changing rapidly in the early 19th century and populations growing,
this point in time appears to mark an improvement in the likelihood of
dying in a conflict.



==========================================================================
The "change point" technique used by the mathematicians was initially
developed by researchers at Lancaster University. It was developed
further by the York mathematicians into an algorithm capable of analysing "heavy tailed" data where there is a larger probability of getting very
high values -- something that has made analysing battle deaths very
challenging in the past.

The research team stress that the battle deaths data sets they used --
from the Correlates of War Project and Regius Professor Kristian Gleditsch
at the University of Essex -- do not allow for the question of whether
violence in war is in decline to be answered with full accuracy.

Lead author of the study, Brennen Fagan, a PhD student in the Department
of Mathematics at the University of York, said: "Data on war deaths
will never be perfect. Firstly, it is difficult to know which deaths to
include in the data set as many deaths are often brought about indirectly
from war -- such as famine or outbreaks of disease. For example, should
deaths from Spanish Influenza be counted in the total number of deaths
from the First World War? "We also acknowledge that the data is likely
to be Eurocentric, with the possibility that many deaths incurred by
conflicts in the developing world have not been included.

"While it has its shortcomings, our analysis provides a methodology
for future investigations and an empirical basis for political and
historical discussions." Dr Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist
at Harvard University, who has written extensively on the subject of
whether the world has become less violent since the Second World War,
said of the study: "Congratulations on such a sophisticated study of
historical changes in war deaths. I've long hoped to see a change point analysis of these data, and this one is beautiful."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_York. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Brennen T. Fagan, Marina I. Knight, Niall J. MacKay, A. Jamie Wood.

Change point analysis of historical battle deaths. Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society), 2020;
DOI: 10.1111/rssa.12578 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200616113913.htm

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