In the TED Talk Sean Gourley on the Mathematics of War, using mathematics to track and interpret war is discussed.

Sean Gourley, a physicist from New Zealand, began his project by assembling a team of scientists, economists, and mathematicians. They then used various media sources to obtain information on the war in Iraq, and then used a computer to filter all of it and pull out the bits in which they were interested. Using this data, the distribution of attack sizes in Iraq was produced and graphed. The vertical axis was frequency of attacks, and the horizontal axis was number of deaths. For instance, the ordered pair (47,1) would mean there were 47 attacks with 1 casualty.

They then did the same technique for other wars, and surprisingly, the same distribution emerged. Expanding their study further and further, every war produced a similar distribution. Furthermore, each war had a slope that was within .75 of the mean (which was -2.5).

Using this data, the team produced the equation $P(x)=Cx^{-\alpha}$, where $P$ is the probability, $x$ is the number killed, $C$ is a constant, and $\alpha$ is the slope of the line. The group theorized that this is a result of necessity when a group is fighting against a much stronger force. In order for their resistance to exist, it has to follow the discovered pattern.

Gourley concludes that we may be able to use this model to interpret the progress of a war, and in theory try to push it in the right direction, whatever that may be.