Open Source Tools Turn WikiLeaks Into Illustrated Afghan Meltdown

[kpete]

Open Source Tools Turn WikiLeaks Into Illustrated Afghan Meltdown (Updated)

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/open-source-wikileaked-docs-illustrated-afghan-meltdown/#ixzz0w90qbFCu



It’s one thing to read about individual Taliban attacks in WikiLeaks’ trove of war logs. It’s something quite different to see the bombings and the shootings mount, and watch the insurgency metastasize.

NYU political science grad student (and occasional Danger Room contributor) Drew Conway has done just that, using an open source statistical programming language called R and a graphical plotting software tool. The results are unnerving, like stop-motion photography of a freeway wreck. Above is the latest example: a graph showing the spread of combat from 2004 to 2009. It’s exactly what you wouldn’t want to see as a war drags on.

“The sheer volume of observations (in the WikiLeaks database) inhibit the majority of consumers from being able to gain knowledge from it. By providing graphical summaries of the data people can draw inferences quickly, which would have been very difficult to do by serially reading through the files,” Conway e-mails Danger Room. “For instance, in the most recent graph I posted , many people were noticing the increasing number of attacks around Afghanistan’s ‘ring road,’ over time, and seeing that as an indication of the Taliban’s attempt to undermine the Afghanistan government by cutting off villages from one another.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/open-source-wikileaked-docs-illustrated-afghan-meltdown/#ixzz0w90jt8gT

[L0oniX]

1. Looks like someone is being circled.

[Recursion]

3. I believe it's called "Ghor"

That's the part of Afghanistan that even the Taliban and Al Qaeda were scared to go into because they really just don't give a shit who you are there, they just want to kill you and take your stuff, more or less like they've done to everyone who came in for several thousand years.

Rory Stewart's book The Places In Between is a travel log of his walking through the region. Great read.

[snot]

2. Here's an animated version:

http://www.c-cyte.com/Afghan_Meltdown_Animation.html