4 ms·
I wonder if the first digits comform to Benford's Law. Basically, the first digits of the vote counts should be 1, 2, 3 much more often than they should be 7,
by alyssumclimbs 17y ago
I wonder if the first digits comform to Benford's Law. Basically, the first digits of the vote counts should be 1, 2, 3 much more often than they should be 7, 8, 9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law
- brown9-2 17y agoFivethirtyeight.com took a look at this, and found some oddities: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/karroubis-unlucky-7s.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/karroubis-unlucky-7s....
- bcl 17y agoI think this article from 538 does a much better job covering the subject than the original one, who's methodology is questionable.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- thras 17y agoIndeed. It's quite non-intuitive, but the naive assumption that the last digits are randomly distributed is simply wrong. Here is a V.I. Arnold essay about Benford's Law: http://www.math.ru.nl/~mueger/arnold.pdf http://www.math.ru.nl/~mueger/arnold.pdf