Comments on: Iranian elections, with SCIENCE

By: hass

hass — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:45:32 +0000

Too bad that according to the Carter Center, which has observed elections in more than 70 countries, Benford’s Law does not apply to elections and is a poor indicator of fraud.
Find the link and more info on other statistical studies of the election here: http://tinyurl.com/lxos5c

By: Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:31:25 +0000

Interesting take on the election. video: Iran Election Questions: Noam Chomsky's Speculation

By: wally

wally — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:05:41 +0000

A differing opinion:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000004.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

By: Jörg Wenck

Jörg Wenck — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Another post on the topic, by John Graham-Cumming:
“Does Benford’s Law apply to election results?” At: http://www.jgc.org/blog/

By: Sean Matthews

Sean Matthews — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:49:19 +0000

Benford’s law is the observation that _dimensioned_ measurements are distributed as if drawn from a logarithmic scale, since that is the only distribution stable under an arbitrary change of basis (does that help?).

Less precisely, but more comprehensibly, Benford’s law says that in many circumstances, measurements of various sorts are more likely to start with lower than higher digits (for complex, but convincing, reasons as outlined above). It is an important rule in, e.g., forensic data analysis.

Note that Andrew Gelman (who is prof of statistics at Columbia) disputes the application of Benford’s law here in his blog. The posting is worth reading.

By: mink

mink — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:12:54 +0000

I don’t quite understand the second point. Can you please explain more?
What does it mean
“in most data sets there is a large excess of numbers that begin with low digits, and that therefore fake data can be identified by its divergence from this”.
What do the “low digits” refer to?