Accounting for Death in War: Separating Fact from Fiction

Offered By: Royal Holloway, University of London via FutureLearn

Course Description

Overview

Understand how war deaths are counted

Calculating the number of deaths during a war is a difficult, but necessary, task - having accurate information is crucial for political and societal debates and decisions.

On this course you will explore the methods currently used to account for war deaths and then apply these methods to particular wars. Along the way you will debunk some widely circulated war-death claims. You will focus mainly on direct, violent deaths but will also cover some estimates of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by war.

This course is for anyone interested in war, history and politics and/or the use and abuse of numbers and statistics. You don’t need an advanced knowledge of mathematics.

Syllabus

Documentation of violent war deaths

Welcome to the course
Military personnel
Including civilians
Casualty recording
Conclusion

Estimation of violent war deaths

Introduction
Sample surveys
Applying survey methods to estimate violent war deaths
Quantifying uncertainty
Survey success and failure
Capture-recapture - multiple systems estimation
Conclusion

Beyond violent deaths

Introduction
Excess deaths and indirect deaths
Problems with excess deaths in theory and practice
Injuries
Consolidating our knowledge
Conclusion

Taught by

Michael Spagat