Skiddy Nipper
Oct 28, 2021

I looked up Benford's Law in Wikipedia. Strangely it says nothing about the occurrence of zeroes. Yet this article places a lot of emphasis on the occurrence of zeroes.

Also, Benford's Law is applicable to leading digits. But this article applies it to trailing digits. So that's a problem

Misuse of Benford's Law was the cause of a lot of hysteria during the last US Presidential Election. Some of the election results were analysed (by a Harvard scholar no less) and while the Trump votes appeared to follow Benford's Law, the Biden votes did not - so a great hue-and-cry went up from the Trump supporters alleging election fraud. But the venerable Harvard scholar had overlooked some subtle kink in Benford's Law. It's use is not so straightforward.

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Skiddy Nipper
Skiddy Nipper

Written by Skiddy Nipper

Slippery, immature, a bit of a crustacean, and dangerous to know.

No responses yet

Write a response