Lanchester’s Law

One of my favourite writers is John Allen Paulos, who writes with great clarity on maths, especially linking maths to the real world.

Today, I read this https://math.temple.edu/~paulos/troops.html and his related article (follow the link).

Googling Lanchester's law shows Wikipedia and other articles- in a nutshell, the proposition is that the strength of an arm increases with the square of its size.

I suspect this might be true for chess too, though it is not something I have thought of before. There is a fairly elementary principle of counting the number of attackers and the number of defenders; and principles such as 'bringing more pieces to the party' about reinforcements. Perhaps, though, if white has 3 attacking pieces, and black 2 defenders, white's superiority is more 9:4 than 3:2. It can seem like this, sometimes.

Back to real life, John Allen's article ends with the sobering thought that Lanchester's Law is exemplified in the attractiveness of guerrilla tactics: weight of sheer numbers compared with advanced weaponry.

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