The chaos theory that uses statistics and mathematical equations and the control balance theory that deals in probabilities, rather than causes. Although it may be difficult, mathematics can lead to some surprising solutions. It’s no wonder the chaos theory is slow to develop – most of us criminal justice students don’t do a lot of math! I am just learning the impact of preset formulas and combat ratios on the battlefield. In the Civil War especially, combat ratios were used extensively by the South, which had a huge disadvantage in personnel, equipment and money to historically great success. The North finally figured out how to do math and the war ended shortly after. Unfortunately, math has another obstacle – when people want something to be true, like “economic justice”, crime analysis based on math would not support their cause. Blaming slavery for crimes committed today is much easier than creating a formula that identified the probability of criminal activity and discouraging that activity (or other avenues to reduce crime). Finally, in any society, people can think up the most heinous crimes. In a free society, those thoughts are not crimes until some action is taken to further those ideas – probability versus certainty or control balance theory.