From the Loyalist blog It's Still Only Thursday, a piece looking at 'legitimate targets' during the North's politically violent conflict.

Statistical reanalysis of The Troubles

Over the course of the past 2 years, myself and my fellow ISOT ‘admin’ have re-examined approximately 75-80% of all Troubles related deaths, those attributable to either Loyalist or republican armed groups.

Our objectives were relatively simple-

1: To ascertain who exactly both sets of ‘combatants’ regarded as being “legitimate targets“.

2: To calculate how many of the aforementioned “legitimate targets” each armed group actually killed.

3: To calculate, or in some instances estimate, how many “legitimate targets” were available over the course of the conflict.

4: To calculate, as a percentage, the total number of “legitimate targets” actually killed by each ‘side’.

At first glance, this seems a straightforward, if somewhat time consuming, task. In reality however, it is nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Take, for instance, the question of just who was regarded as a “legitimate target”. At first glance it seems easy to answer but it is, in fact, anything but.

Continue reading @ It's Still Only Thursday.


➽ Follow It's Still Only Thursday on Twitter @0nIyThursday

Killing by Numbers ➤ Part 1

From the Loyalist blog It's Still Only Thursday, a piece looking at 'legitimate targets' during the North's politically violent conflict.

Statistical reanalysis of The Troubles

Over the course of the past 2 years, myself and my fellow ISOT ‘admin’ have re-examined approximately 75-80% of all Troubles related deaths, those attributable to either Loyalist or republican armed groups.

Our objectives were relatively simple-

1: To ascertain who exactly both sets of ‘combatants’ regarded as being “legitimate targets“.

2: To calculate how many of the aforementioned “legitimate targets” each armed group actually killed.

3: To calculate, or in some instances estimate, how many “legitimate targets” were available over the course of the conflict.

4: To calculate, as a percentage, the total number of “legitimate targets” actually killed by each ‘side’.

At first glance, this seems a straightforward, if somewhat time consuming, task. In reality however, it is nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Take, for instance, the question of just who was regarded as a “legitimate target”. At first glance it seems easy to answer but it is, in fact, anything but.

Continue reading @ It's Still Only Thursday.


➽ Follow It's Still Only Thursday on Twitter @0nIyThursday

6 comments:

  1. There were no "legitimate targets" of any sort in the Troubles. Just human beings who died for absolutely zilch.

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  2. Yet again, it initially sounds interesting, but then factor in the known cognitive bias of at least one of the researchers and you end up with a dogs dinner.

    There are too many unknown variables. Plus if the 4 objectives do not actually indicate the overall objective of what the researchers are actually trying to achieve with their research?? For example, if: Objective 1: All Catholics were LTs; and Objective 2: the number of Catholics killed?; where Objective 3: is the number of Catholics available between the research window? and compute Objective 4: present the data collected in the previous objectives as a percentage. But to what end?? Let's say it was to determine how effective any group was -then that would require knowledge of how many members a group had --or what outside assistance it had.

    The more selective a group is in defining legitimate targets then their percentage will be much higher, wheras, the more indiscriminate a group is over an even greater source of targets then the lower the percentage will be --I have a hunch that these loyalists, after tweaking unknown variables, may be interpreting lower percentage as a good thing?? But that is just a hunch.

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  3. This is like Cowboys saying Indians were legitimate targets.

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  4. I for one can't see the need for this blatant attempt at revisionism.

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  5. Steve

    Unfortunately that is all we get -I read these articles in hope that they might say something new -that they might say something that makes me think; in the way that David Irvine could articulate the loyalist cause -Billy Hutchinson is good but just does not measure up -I don't hold it against him because I can see he has done his best to resolve issues -no better example than his attempts to resolve the Holy Cross debacle. Both men seemed to overcome the the unionist/loyalists dogma while remaining true to their core beliefs. Unionism/ Loyalism were the better for their progressive views but sadly they could not keep pace -particulalry after Irvines death.

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    Replies
    1. Christy,

      Very true. Loyalism lost a huge voice when David passed.

      Delete