“Mathematics of Terror” by Andrew Curry, Discover Magazine, July/August 2010
In 2001, based on examination of 20,000 incidents from 25 years of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) attacks, researchers found that the number of attacks (frequency y) associated with the numbers of fatalities per attack (attack size x) were not distributed normally, but rather according to a decreasing power law curve. In 2005 they then examined Iraq casualty data and found an almost identical curve as that for Columbia.
Curry concludes that awareness of this distribution may help in strategic planning for a nation’s defense.
See also “The Mathematics of War” for more details about this research.
Do you agree with the Discover author that "you never get such extremes” in a normal distribution?