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)

Insomnia Line

Insomnia Line

Coronasomnia is a not-so-surprising side-effect of the global pandemic. More and more of us are having trouble falling asleep. We wanted to find a way to get inside that nighttime world, to see why pe...

25 Sep 202034min

More Perfect: Sex Appeal

More Perfect: Sex Appeal

We lost a legend. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18th, 2020. She was 87. In honor of her passing we are re-airing the More Perfect episode dedicated to one of her cases, b...

19 Sep 202053min

Falling

Falling

There are so many ways to fall—in love, asleep, even flat on your face. This hour, Radiolab dives into stories of great falls.  We jump into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, upend some my...

17 Sep 202056min

Bringing Gamma Back, Again

Bringing Gamma Back, Again

Today, we return to the lab of neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, which brought us one of our favorite stories from four years ago - about the power of flashing lights on an Alzheimer’s-addled (mouse) brain...

11 Sep 202036min

Fungus Amungus

Fungus Amungus

Six years ago, a new infection began popping up in four different hospitals on three different continents, all around the same time. It wasn’t a bacteria, or a virus. It was ... a killer fungus. No on...

4 Sep 202031min

Translation

Translation

How close can words get you to the truth and feel and force of life? That's the question poking at our ribs this hour, as we wonder how it is that the right words can have the wrong meanings, and why ...

27 Aug 20201h 5min

Lebanon, USA

Lebanon, USA

This is a story of a road trip. After a particularly traumatic Valentine's Day, Fadi Boukaram was surfing google maps and noticed that there was a town called Lebanon... in Oregon. Being Lebanese hims...

21 Aug 202042min

The Wubi Effect

The Wubi Effect

When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huawei and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. ...

14 Aug 202055min

Populärt inom Vetenskap

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