The distribution of violent event and interevent times in conflicts
arXiv:2501.00027v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Enduring violent conflicts are interrupted by intervals without violence. Studies of interevent times found power law distributions, but they were based on coarse-grained data, typically with a resolution of a single day. Fine-grained data, with a resolution of seconds or shorter, is rare. A mathematical theorem predicts that the distributions thereof will be lognormal, not power law. When violent conflicts are represented as multiplicative processes, and fine-grained data is used, the log normal does not fit better than the power law. Therefore, common wisdom is not refuted. Violent events take much energy and their distribution is lognormal.
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Abstract:Enduring violent conflicts are interrupted by intervals without violence. Studies of interevent times found power law distributions, but they were based on coarse-grained data, typically with a resolution of a single day. Fine-grained data, with a resolution of seconds or shorter, is rare. A mathematical theorem predicts that the distributions thereof will be lognormal, not power law. When violent conflicts are represented as multiplicative processes, and fine-grained data is used, the log normal does not fit better than the power law. Therefore, common wisdom is not refuted. Violent events take much energy and their distribution is lognormal.
Subjects:
Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph); Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an)
Cite as: arXiv:2501.00027 [physics.soc-ph]
(or arXiv:2501.00027v3 [physics.soc-ph] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2501.00027
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
Submission history
From: Jeroen Bruggeman [view email] [v1] Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:42:53 UTC (232 KB) [v2] Fri, 3 Jan 2025 12:38:57 UTC (232 KB) [v3] Tue, 31 Mar 2026 06:28:38 UTC (68 KB)
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