Who is debunking math?
Allegations of Fraud in 2020 US Election
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xjx388
Penultimate Amazing
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The notion that Benford's law would apply to precinct-by-precinct votes in a particular State has been debunked. In each State, each precinct has roughly the same number of votes; i.e. there are not orders of magnitude in difference. Therefore, Benford's law would not apply.
Cain
Straussian
It's a time-efficient strategy. Grab a bunch of theories and have others vet them. It doesn't matter if a lot of them are incorrect because you were never invested in any particular one anyway. The claims that cannot be debunked might be worth holding.
Paul2
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I've reached my limit of expertise on this topic. Someone else will not doubt be capable of carrying on.
Well, to be honest I was relying on reading about it's use years ago. A quick google search show's the Washington Post using it to analyse the Russian elections in 2016.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...they-may-be-giving-us-the-statistical-finger/
There are plenty of examples of it's use in academic papers. Maybe it is no good? but it is hardly an out there technique that Trump supporters have raised up out of some pseudo-mathematics netherworld. It's been discussed on this forum in the past.
Mader Levap
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On this very thread, earlier.
Starts here with Zig. For some reason, he is now gone.
Main debunking is here and here. Others also noted unsuitability of Benford's law for detecting election/vote fraud.
You even start to participate after that, so you had to see that. But I guess you are blind to what you do not want to see.
Lol. You are speaking like parody of conspiracy theorist. Protip: it is possible to use math in wrong way.
For example, you lied earlier that
Nope. Wikipedia article about Benford's law has section commenting on when it can and cannot be used.
Most important genera rule is, of course:
I don't see that that would mean that the least significant digit wouldn't follow benford's law. Surely benfords law applies to each precinct. For any given candidates vote in any given precinct there is ~30% probability that the least significant digit is 1, an 18% probability that it is 2... start adding precincts and a curve should emerge...? No?
It feels like I'm missing something here. Could you explain?
Cavemonster
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Hopefully not too much of a tangent:
There are at least two epistemic goals- A desire to avoid making the wrong choice, and a desire to avoid missing the right choice. In real world circumstances, we're rarely given 100% certainty, so sometimes the weight we give one of these goals over the other makes a difference in what we accept and how we categorize our beliefs.
Most of us use some of both on a case by case basis, but I suspect a significant part of cultural and political divides can be explained at least partly by the difference in people more prone to one goal or the other.
As skeptics, more of us are more concerned with avoiding adopting false beliefs.
I'm guessing that believers in Trump's conspiracy theories, white nationalists, religious folks and republicans in general are more prone to beeing concerned about missing the true beliefs.
It creates a cultural divide where we can't understand each other's concept of "true" because no one talks about the roots of our epistemological practice.
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
In ST's case, "less" would have been appropriate, because it was only the lesser races that voted for Biden.
Biden's lack of "coattails" can probably be best explained by loyal Republicans who were embarrassed by Trump.
It appears that many on this thread are using Wikipedia's "Benford's Law" article. There is a comment highlighted in the footnotes is as follows..." Raimi makes the brief comment: "...many writers ... have said vaguely that Benford's law holds better when the distribution ... covers several orders of magnitude."
Yet, the above quote has morphed into... "Distributions that do not span several orders of magnitude will not follow Benford's law."
Ralph Rami wrote a review article in 1976 debunking the need for multiple magnitudes. The quote that people are quoting which says there is a need for multiple magnitudes... is exactly opposite of what Rami proved in his hallmark book and publication.
Yet, the above quote has morphed into... "Distributions that do not span several orders of magnitude will not follow Benford's law."
Ralph Rami wrote a review article in 1976 debunking the need for multiple magnitudes. The quote that people are quoting which says there is a need for multiple magnitudes... is exactly opposite of what Rami proved in his hallmark book and publication.
xjx388
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I can't explain in any cohesive way, but I would point you to that paper I linked to which specifically looks at using Benford's law to find fraud in elections.
The abstract sums it up:
Armitage72
Philosopher
Fox News cuts off Kayleigh McEnany's press conference, refusing to air her claims about election fraud without evidence.
That doesn't look like it discusses benford's law. It's an argument about a particular graph. In discussing benford's law's applicability to elections, I'd really rather not use the comments of random people on the internet writing on stackexchange specifically about this election. Everybody is far to invested.
There are papers in journals using Benford's law on elections. I quoted the Washington post article applying it to the Russian election. I have seen the paper claiming it's a coinflip as well. You don't debunk something by finding one paper that agrees with you in a sea of others that don't. The threshold for debunking seems to be very low.
Other's have claimed it, based on I'm not sure what and I'm really not sure how mathematically knowledgeable the people claiming it are.
Yes, I see people repeatedly state it is inapplicable, yet it seems to be pretty widely used for exactly this purpose. The people claiming it is inapplicable don't seem to know what they are talking about. At the very least, given it's wide use it's not crazy that people are being falling into error and using it.
Given that it has been debunked, could somebody explain why benford's law doesn't work on elections?
Sure, but does anybody claiming it is debunked actually understand the maths? or are they just regurgitating statements that they don't understand.
No I didn't lie. I could have been wrong. For ***** sake, we are having a discussion about Beford's law because it is interesting. Nothing we say here has any impact on whether Trump manages to pull a miracle out of the bag or not.
This is an interesting point. I think I was wrong about that part and I will rethink. Couldn't you use a different base to mitigate the constraint? In any case, it doesn't seem like it matters to the main discussion since the variability in the vote in the different counties and so forth seems very much more than this.
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Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
You don't have to be a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing.
johnny karate
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A lot of people in this thread have allowed themselves be put in the position in the which they are explaining to conspiracy theorists why something is not correct.
This is a trap in which the conspiracy theorists force you to assume a position and defend it while they escape that burden.
Please do not fall for it.
Force them to take a position and defend it, and watch them scatter like roaches when the lights come on.
This is a trap in which the conspiracy theorists force you to assume a position and defend it while they escape that burden.
Please do not fall for it.
Force them to take a position and defend it, and watch them scatter like roaches when the lights come on.
Yes, that is one paper. The same one quoted by Wayerin. Equally there are many, many papers, and newspaper articles using Benford's law to analyse elections. You don't prove/debunk something by finding one paper whose abstract agrees with you. Chiropractic, homeopathy, and clairvoyance are 100% legit by that criteria.
Ambrosia
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Benfords Law isn't black and white. It gets more accurate the larger the range of the sample being considered.
i.e. if you have a set of values that span one order of magnitude it might apply or it might not.
if your dataset spans two orders of magnitude, it might apply it might not, though it's more likely to apply than a dataset of one order of magnitude
if your dataset spans 10 orders of magnitude it is very likely to apply.
Somewhere along the line of one oom to ten oom there' a point where you can say this dataset is not a naturally occuring set of numbers to a very high degree of confidence.
In order to say a dataset has occurred naturally or has been manipulated you need a high degree of confidence - which doesn't exist when your dataset spans a low number of orders of magnitude. (or doesn't follow a power law)
The short version is WE DO NOT KNOW WHY BENFORDS LAW WORKS - what we can say is that it's a very useful tool in the times and places that we know it does work and, spoiler alert, detecting election fraud ain't one of them.
pgwenthold
Penultimate Amazing
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To quote from the abstract
They used simulated date and found that there was no correlation between the conclusions of Benford's and "fraud"
This has been a skeptic board in name only for a very long time now.
acbytesla
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Prove it.
Buying into CTs is not skepticism. Every single claim about problems with the election have been dismantled.
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