Breaking Benford
Radiolab13 Nov 2020

Breaking Benford

In the days after the US Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, many supporters of Donald Trump are crying foul. Voter fraud. And a key piece of evidence? A century-old quirk of math called Benford’s Law. We at Radiolab know Benford’s Law well, and have covered it before. In this political dispatch, Latif and Soren Sherlock their way through the precinct numbers to see if these claims hold up. Spoiler: they don’t. But the reason why is more interesting than you’d expect.

This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Links:

Walter Mebane, “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States”


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(653)

Alone Enough

Alone Enough

Cat Jaffee didn’t necessarily think of herself as someone who loved being alone. But then, the pandemic hit. And she got diagnosed with cancer. Actually, those two things happened on the exact same da...

24 Mars 202343min

Apologetical

Apologetical

How do you fix a word that’s broken? A word we need when we bump into someone on the street, or break someone’s heart. In our increasingly disconnected secular world, “sorry” has been stretched and tw...

17 Mars 202355min

Buttons Not Buttons

Buttons Not Buttons

Tiny buttons have such a hold on us. They can be portals to power, freedom, and destruction. Today, with the help of buttons, we tell you about taking charge of the little things in life, about fortun...

10 Mars 202327min

Crabs All the Way Down

Crabs All the Way Down

This week we examine one of nature's most humble creations: crabs. Turns out when you look closely at these little scuttlers, things get surprisingly existential — about how to come into being, how to...

3 Mars 202325min

The Trust Engineers

The Trust Engineers

First aired in 2015, this is an episode about social media, and how, when we talk online, things can quickly go south. But do they have to? In the earlier days of Facebook, we met with a group of soci...

24 Feb 202330min

Golden Goose

Golden Goose

After years of being publicly shamed for “fleecing” the taxpayers with their frivolous and obscure studies, scientists decided to hit back with… an awards show?! This episode, we gate-crash the Grammy...

17 Feb 202345min

Bliss

Bliss

In this deep cut from 2012, we are searching for platonic ideals longing for completion, engaged in epic quests for holy grails in science, linguistics, and world peace. And along the way, we’ll meet ...

10 Feb 202351min

Ukraine: The Handoff

Ukraine: The Handoff

We continue the story of a covert smuggling operation to bring abortion pills into Ukraine, shortly after the Russian invasion. In this episode, reporters Katz Laszlo and Gregory Warner go to Ukraine,...

3 Feb 202332min

Populärt inom Vetenskap

dumma-manniskor
allt-du-velat-veta
p3-dystopia
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rss-ufobortom-rimligt-tvivel
rss-vetenskapsradion
rss-vetenskapsradion-2
rss-spraket
det-morka-psyket
svd-nyhetsartiklar
medicinvetarna
paranormalt-med-caroline-giertz
bildningspodden
sexet
hacka-livet
naturmorgon
rss-odla
barnpsykologerna
vetenskapsradion
halsorevolutionen