Math in War

I found an interesting article on the New York Times website in the opinion section. The article is called "Doing the Math on Mexican Drug Wars". I wasn't sure at first what the Mexican Drug War is but I briefly researched it and found Viridiana Rios' perspective in her writing to be very thought-provoking. She described how people using mathematics and a knowledge of social science can predict the movement and decisions of individuals as they live and interact with others in a society. Human logic, research, and personal points of view all factor in to the equation for forming an equation of the future activities of many people.

Applying this theory to a particular society can be difficult. At times, false patterns are found when randomness could be normal in the certain place. The Mexican Drug War is big news these days and it involves many people which means there are patterns in the interactions of the society. Viridiana Rios explains her travels to investigate this phenomenon.

Sometimes the way to solve catastrophic problems in a society isn’t by doing the obvious. Most people are not very good at math and therefore forget about it when trying to figure something out. Viridiana realized this when she traveled to Mexico and saw for herself the mayhem that the country’s citizens have been enduring. She considered her mathematics background and decided that the future of the drug war could be predicted and solved through observation and simple math equations:

“I have always wanted to contribute to Mexico’s well-being. I once believed that the way to do so was to study economics and political science and then work for the government. But I never expected that my means of trying to save my country would be math.”

The writer of the article describes how she has gone about the problem:

“The beauty of my method lies in its simplicity. With mathematics I’m able to codify and simplify reality to make it manageable and, more important, malleable. I represent each possible individual as an equation in which each term symbolizes tastes, goals, profession and abilities. All people get portrayed: Policemen, politicians, citizens and drug cartels start living in this mathematical world as planes and hyperplanes and, as in real life, they interact and affect one another, sometimes colluding, sometimes colliding, sometimes neither.”

Piece by piece, Viridiana works hard to use her knowledge of the civilization in her home country combined with her education in mathematics. She understands that every person is important in the future of the people as a whole as they interact with each other, hopefully soon in a more peaceful manner.