[pyuser583]

“On the frequency and severity of interstate war” by Aaron Clauset.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.05086.pdf

Analyzes a claim made in the 1950s by a prominent statistician: the frequency of interstate wars follows a simple Poisson arrival process and their severity follows a simple power-law distribution.

He was right, but it’s not clear why.

The paper is interesting because it shows how a new bit of knowledge creates a large number of known unknowns from previously unknown unknowns.

It also shows statistical magic was very much possible prior to computers.