Predicting peace

Time-to-event analysis, coupled with the right data source, can help us understand when violent conflicts will end. Maybe. In this article, we learn the probability that the wars in Ukraine and Sudan end within a year. But more importantly, we learn how to forecast, which is a skill that can be used for making the world a better place.

Full article (12–26 minute read): Predicting peace

Flashcard of the week

The probability of the first success in a Bernoulli series being at opportunity k is ...

I share this one not because the answer is particularly interesting, but because it is a relatively simple question that still requires a fair bit of fundamental understanding.

A Bernoulli trial is an independent binary event that has probability p of being a success. This means the probability of failure is (1-p).

In order for the first success to be at opportunity k, two things must be true. The first is that all the opportunities prior to k must have been failures. That's the obvious thing.

The less obvious thing is that opportunity k must also be a success! The way the question is phrased, there is nothing that guarantees success at opportunity k. I tend to forget that condition, which means I tend to compute a probability that is too high.

The total probability of both those things is the product of the individual probabilities, i.e.

... (1-p)^(k-1) p

(This product is the total probability because the events are independent.)

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