Terrorist Attacks Can Be Predicted with Mathematical Model, Claims UM Researchers

One of the horrors of fighting a war against a loosely-organized group of insurgents, like the United States is currently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the ever present threat of seemingly random attacks. But what if there was a mathematical pattern that could be used to predict those attacks? Well, researches at the University of Miami claim they've found one.

UM Physicist Neil Johnson talked to Russia Today, and says that the math has less to do with, say, predicting the outcome of a football game, and more to do with analyzing the patterns that make predicting a traffic jam in Miami statistically similar to predicting a traffic jam anywhere else.

The team analyzed data from nine wars, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and found that all the wars that involved insurgent forces fit the mathematical format.

Johnson says that the model could be used to predict future attacks, as well as to run scenarios predicting the outcomes of the effects of either increasing or decreasing the size of the non-insurgent forces.