The aim of this project is to study the lifespan of polities (political entities linked to a people), i.e. how long societies last.
My study is done in Python and R and its value is purely descriptive, there is no predictive ambition. The analysis is done together with and under the supervision of Dr Annette Baudisch. The questions we asked ourselves are: how long does a collective entity last? When does it die? How is this death defined?
In demography, we know how to calculate the average life span of a human being based on various parameters: year and place of birth, gender, personal characteristics, job, family, etc.
How would the same study work for collective entities? Can we really find purely descriptive functions of the life trajectory of a society?
Work in progress.