Monday, January 8, 2018

Was Napoleon The Best General Ever? (According To The Math He Was)

Image: Napoleon (Wikipedia)

Ethan Arsht, Towards Data Science: Napoleon was the Best General Ever, and the Math Proves it.

Ranking Every* General in the History of Warfare

*Almost every

When Africanus asked who, in Hannibal’s opinion, was the greatest general, Hannibal named Alexander… as to whom he would rank second, Hannibal selected Pyrrhus… asking whom Hannibal considered third, he named himself without hesitation. Then Scipio broke into a laugh and said, “What would you say if you had defeated me?”

— Livy


Like Hannibal, I wanted to rank powerful leaders in the history of warfare. Unlike Hannibal, I sought to use data to determine a general’s abilities, rather than specific accounts of generals’ achievements. The result is a system for ranking every prominent commander in military history.

Read more ....

WNU Editor:  For those who like math and history .... this is a must read.

3 comments:

Andrew Jackson said...

Alexander Suvorov,73 battles,73 victories. How's that for math.

Caecus said...

He used Wikipedia to gather the numbers??

Anonymous said...

History proves that the math is wrong. Napoleon lost.