4 ms·

Can you speak about Benfords law or post data plots on Parler? Unfortunately you can no longer do that on HN even...

by _red 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago
Consider perusing the answers at https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/do-vote-counts-for-joe-biden-in-the-2020-election-violate-benfords-law https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/do-vote-c... before you do.
- _red 6y ago
  In other words, no we can't discuss that here and should have those conversations on other sites....ok...
  - rusk 6y ago
    HN does not suffer fools gladly. Speaking as a fool, I find this challenging at times, but overall I think it is a distinctive feature. I'm free to go to reddit and find a sub with fellow wingnuts if I fancy something more whimsical.
  - jonquark 6y ago
    That isn't what the comment you are replying to said. It said that before you claim that thing X and thing Y are related, take a look at this page that goes through the claims and debunks them. If the answers on that page are mistaken and it is relevant to a topic on HN then it seems logical (to me) that you could discuss it here (but unfounded political allegations should be off-topic in most HN chats in my opinion).
    - _red 6y ago
      Unfortunately links to other pages / data-scientist who disagree with above are "flagged".
      - Robin_Message 6y ago
        I have showdead on and I don't see any "flagged" links. Are you claiming a link you tried to shared is being silently suppressed beyond HN's normal moderation tools?
rvz 6y ago
Another tip: Twitter instantly flags your tweet for mentioning any of the words 'hammer', 'vote' and 'you' in the same sentence. Sounds like someone needs to recalibrate their so called 'misinformation' detection systems. For the ministry of truth, they want you to believe 'their' facts. Not 'the' facts.
Robin_Message 6y ago
Benford's law only applies to numbers drawn from a distribution with a wide spread over multiple orders of magnitude. So, financial transactions in a big company would show this. Votes in US districts, not so much. So there, we've spoken about it. (I think the technical term for the distribution is scale-free but I could be wrong. The law follows reasonably intuitively from thinking about the fractional part of logarithms.)
- collyw 6y ago
  Wasn't it used in an Iranian election as evidence of shenanigans? >So there, we've spoken about it. You seem to have given your opinion without wanting anyone else to give theirs. Why are you so against discussing it?
  - Robin_Message 6y ago
    Yes, from the paper "A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2789.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2789.pdf): "The total numbers of votes per voting area in the MOI’s data vary from about 10^4 to 10^6, i.e. by two orders of magnitude (powers of 10). This suggests that Benford’s Law may be applicable" The issue, as I understand it, is that the US districts that the "law" is being applied to are too small, uniform, and uniformly sized, and therefore the "law" doesn't apply. Additionally, many of the graphs being shared have obvious biases (change of scale between one candidate and the other) which suggests bad faith of those making the graphs (see the skeptics.stackexchange link a sibling shared). > Why are you so against discussing it? I'm not especially against discussing it. I am against presenting it as a fait accompli that the election was rigged, when thirty seconds of Googling and critical thought show it to be a red herring.
    - forest_dweller 6y ago
      Most of the images that involve the graphs are just memeing. I have a Discord with a bunch of users and for want of a better term people are just shit posting them.

Can you speak about Benfords law or post data plots on Parler? Unfortunately you can no longer do that on HN even...

by _red 6y ago

Can you speak about Benfords law or post data plots on Parler? Unfortunately you can no longer do that on HN even...

Consider perusing the answers at https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/do-vote-counts-for-joe-biden-in-the-2020-election-violate-benfords-law https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/do-vote-c... before you do.

_red 6y ago
In other words, no we can't discuss that here and should have those conversations on other sites....ok...
- rusk 6y ago
  HN does not suffer fools gladly. Speaking as a fool, I find this challenging at times, but overall I think it is a distinctive feature. I'm free to go to reddit and find a sub with fellow wingnuts if I fancy something more whimsical.
- jonquark 6y ago
  That isn't what the comment you are replying to said. It said that before you claim that thing X and thing Y are related, take a look at this page that goes through the claims and debunks them. If the answers on that page are mistaken and it is relevant to a topic on HN then it seems logical (to me) that you could discuss it here (but unfounded political allegations should be off-topic in most HN chats in my opinion).
  - _red 6y ago
    Unfortunately links to other pages / data-scientist who disagree with above are "flagged".
    - Robin_Message 6y ago
      I have showdead on and I don't see any "flagged" links. Are you claiming a link you tried to shared is being silently suppressed beyond HN's normal moderation tools?

rvz 6y ago

Another tip: Twitter instantly flags your tweet for mentioning any of the words 'hammer', 'vote' and 'you' in the same sentence. Sounds like someone needs to recalibrate their so called 'misinformation' detection systems. For the ministry of truth, they want you to believe 'their' facts. Not 'the' facts.

Robin_Message 6y ago

Benford's law only applies to numbers drawn from a distribution with a wide spread over multiple orders of magnitude. So, financial transactions in a big company would show this. Votes in US districts, not so much. So there, we've spoken about it. (I think the technical term for the distribution is scale-free but I could be wrong. The law follows reasonably intuitively from thinking about the fractional part of logarithms.)

collyw 6y ago
Wasn't it used in an Iranian election as evidence of shenanigans? >So there, we've spoken about it. You seem to have given your opinion without wanting anyone else to give theirs. Why are you so against discussing it?
- Robin_Message 6y ago
  Yes, from the paper "A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2789.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0906.2789.pdf): "The total numbers of votes per voting area in the MOI’s data vary from about 10^4 to 10^6, i.e. by two orders of magnitude (powers of 10). This suggests that Benford’s Law may be applicable" The issue, as I understand it, is that the US districts that the "law" is being applied to are too small, uniform, and uniformly sized, and therefore the "law" doesn't apply. Additionally, many of the graphs being shared have obvious biases (change of scale between one candidate and the other) which suggests bad faith of those making the graphs (see the skeptics.stackexchange link a sibling shared). > Why are you so against discussing it? I'm not especially against discussing it. I am against presenting it as a fait accompli that the election was rigged, when thirty seconds of Googling and critical thought show it to be a red herring.
  - forest_dweller 6y ago
    Most of the images that involve the graphs are just memeing. I have a Discord with a bunch of users and for want of a better term people are just shit posting them.