Is war a random event?

[Tuan V Nguyen <t.nguyen@garvan.unsw.edu.au>]

Hello friends,
	
	It seems VNSA members are involved in Die^n Ho^`ng 
conference, and somewhat forget their academic activities. Well, 
let me present you the following somewhat related problem of what 
you are now discussing, for thinking. 

	Between 1500 and 1931, there were 299 wars broke out in the 
world (by definition, a w military action was a war if it either 
was legally declared, involved over 50,000 troops, or resulted in 
significant boundary realignments). To achieve greater uniformity 
from war to war, najor confrontations were split into smaller 
"subwars"; World War I, for example, was treated as five separate 
wars. The following table gives the distribution of the number of 
years in which x wars broke out (432). The last column gives the 
expected frequencies based on the Poisson probability model, P(X = 
x) = 0.60 x e**(-0.69) / x!

		Number of wars	        Observed        Expected
		(x) begining		frequency	frequency
		in a given		 
		year			
		0			223		217
		1			142		149
		2			48		52
		3			15		12
		4+			4		2
		Total			432		432


	In statistics, fitting data is a relatively task, but to find 
an explanation/interpretation for it is not quite easy. Now, I 
would like to have your opinions on how to interpret these data. 
What does it mean in real life? Is human society has a constant 
hostile level (measured by the number of new wars per year)? or 
what? Please feel free to discuss your points.

	Cheers,


	Tuan V Nguyen