ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES IN THE AMERICAN INDIAN WAR: A BAYESIAN ANALYSIS USING THE POWER LAW DISTRIBUTION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gillespie, Colin S.
• 署名单位: Newcastle University - UK
• 刊物名称: ANNALS OF APPLIED STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1932-6157
• DOI: 10.1214/17-AOAS1082
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2357-2374
• 关键词: sample fraction

摘要

The American Indian War lasted over one hundred years, and is a major event in the history of North America. As expected, since the war commenced in late eighteenth century, casualty records surrounding this conflict contain numerous sources of error, such as rounding and counting. Additionally, while major battles such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn were recorded, many smaller skirmishes were completely omitted from the records. Over the last few decades, it has been observed that the number of casualties in major conflicts follows a power law distribution. This paper places this observation within the Bayesian paradigm, enabling modelling of different error sources, allowing inferences to be made about the overall casualty numbers in the American Indian War.