Talk:Benford's law

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Benford's Law: The Questionable Statistics of Election Deniers". Logically. November 7, 2022. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a search of the text included in this post indicates that it was lifted from the Wikipedia entry for Benford's Law.

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There's no such term as a "high burglary".

The WP article contains this:

"Television crime drama NUMB3RS used Benford's law in the 2006 episode "The Running Man" to help solve a series of high burglaries.[30]"

I don't think "high burglary" is a real term (Google has never heard of it), and have no idea what it could mean. A burglary that is a high crime? A high altitude burglary? A burglary committed while intoxicated? A burglary of a mansion? The link does not contain the term, and the burglary referred to in the link is a fictional one in an episode of "Numb3rs", a break-in at a university laboratory that is equipped with the latest high tech anti-burglary security equipment (the burglars are nevertheless successful in defeating the security equipment).

https://numb3rs.fandom.com/wiki/The_Running_Man contains this:

"He has a past selling high-end break-in tools. Some of the tech that the robbers would have had to get past are after his time. He suggests going to look for somebody else and for the police to stop bothering him."

So the word "high" seems to have broken off from "high-end" and somehow got attached to the front of "burglaries", for no apparent reason.

I therefore propose deleting the word "high" from the sentence. Polar Apposite (talk) 20:06, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely - go for it! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:27, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Polar Apposite (talk) 20:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted edit

@Constant314: I'm aware; what I was saying was that it's obvious information that did not need to be included, especially as an entire sentence in the lead. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 05:37, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I missed the implication of the sarcasm. The 11% needs to be there to contrast with the 30% and 5% in the previous sentence. But the one out of nine is redundant. I will fix it. Constant314 (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First to Apply Benford's Law to Election Forensics

In the election data section, the article states: "Walter Mebane, a political scientist and statistician at the University of Michigan, was the first to apply the second-digit Benford's law-test (2BL-test) in election forensics." I'm writing a paper on this field currently, and from my research, I don't believe this is true. I'm pretty sure the first paper to apply Benford's Law to detecting election fraud was Pericchi and Torres: https://urru.org/papers/2004_varios/pericchi-torres.pdf

It's not widely credited as it's in Spanish, but it's even cited in Mebane's original paper. Matthewuzhere (talk) 01:22, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

French TV series HIP

HPI - S03 E04 - Loi de Benford HPI_(TV_series)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27732589/?ref_=ttep_ep_4

YamaPlos talk 23:32, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a suggestion for improving the article? Constant314 (talk) 00:38, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kafri ball-and-box model?

The article casually mentions the Kafri ball-and-box model without explaining what it actually is, or providing a wikilink. There isn’t currently a WP article about it; is it notable enough for one? If not, maybe it’s not notable enough to be mentioned in this article either. 173.27.3.111 (talk) 20:26, 10 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Google brings up a couple of papers from someone who reformulated probability (and numbers in general...?) in terms of putting balls in and out of boxes. Not saying that's necessarily incorrect or pseudoscience, but... he does claim that his method is the true justification and underpinning for Planck's law E = hν.

Personally I'm not sure mentioning balls in boxes adds anything to the article. I'd remove it. Euan Richard (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with removing it. No point in factoids without explanations. Constant314 (talk) 18:38, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mathematical law or mystical phenomenon?

The article seemed reluctant to mention in the lead why the law exists... it's nothing more than the result of a transition from a logarithmic to a linear space. Along with the fact that plenty of things in the world are logarithmically distributed, rather than linearly distributed.

I think it's important to mention that up front, because parts of the article seem to give the impression that the law is some kind of inscrutable numerological magic. So I made this edit. Euan Richard (talk) 17:59, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is fairly obvious that continuous data that is uniformly distributed on a log scale would produce Benford's law, but not obvious that it is the only means.

I am not absolutely set on this and am open to changing my mind.

I do want to keep the mention of second digit Benford's Law because of the applicability to voting fraud. Constant314 (talk) 18:45, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The statement needs some sort of source; it's not that obvious. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:40, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to get the exact numbers produced on the first graph on the page, then yes, that really does just come from transforming a discrete uniform distribution in log10 space into a linear distribution. The article already has the calculation, and a related figure, in the "Definition" section.

There will be other ways of thinking about it, but they'll be mathematically equivalent... and there will be lots of real-world examples that (more-or-less-but-not-quite) recreate that kind of distribution... income levels, or whatever.

The crux of the matter is you're just throwing darts at a piece of logarithmic graph paper - rather than linear graph paper - and counting the digits you hit. I personally felt it was important to clarify quickly in the lead where the "law" comes from, and that there's no magic or mysticism there... rather than a long discussion on individual digits and combinations thereof.

I see you've reverted my edit here, so are protective of the wording... though it looks like a third person has already reverted that reversion... I've never been in an edit war nor am I interested in that, so I'll just leave this comment here and say good luck ;-) Euan Richard (talk) 01:26, 3 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]