Not to get political, but what the hell is a number?

@chazk7530

3 жыл бұрын

They're some kind of Arabic invention.

@nerdbot2.025

3 жыл бұрын

@@chazk7530 um actually the number zero is an arabic invention you would now this if you didn't have some stupid L I B E R A L education /s

@SquidwardTentacles225

3 жыл бұрын

@@chazk7530 oh I was thinking it was some type of antibiotic

@sageoverheaven

3 жыл бұрын

It's racist.

@chazk7530

3 жыл бұрын

@@SquidwardTentacles225 number sounds more like an anesthetic.

If you write the numbers in binary, apparently almost all the numbers start with a 1

@KhoaNguyen-fs6to

3 жыл бұрын

But the law is for base 10, not base 2, dear!

@lorenshure17

3 жыл бұрын

Only 0 in binary doesn’t start with a 1. This is irrelevant for the decimal world

@matthewhubka6350

3 жыл бұрын

More specifically 100% of numbers start with 1 in binary

@raphaelmillion

3 жыл бұрын

@@KhoaNguyen-fs6to benfords law works for all bases.

@castonyoung7514

3 жыл бұрын

@@matthewhubka6350 No. There's still zero. Also I suppose you could right any number with a leading trail of zeros.

I love how you pointed out the importance of context in interpreting data! It's so often overlooked.

@bmalloy0

3 жыл бұрын

Honestly that was the most interesting part about this video

@maxe159

3 жыл бұрын

This. So many times i interact with people who don't account for context and just say,"the number don't lie". Of course numbers don't lie, but people can and you have to know the context behind the numbers

@berserkerciaran

3 жыл бұрын

@@maxe159 "Senor Joe, the numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you at Sacrifice!" - Scott Steiner

@oliveravery9575

3 жыл бұрын

@范德萨阿斯顿发大水发大水发阿斯顿发大水发大水发范德萨我和你吻别我爱你他妈的翔宇我和你吻别元的钱破开该 it's certainly a good question to ask but it's also important to mention specifics. His logic seemed sound to me and if you just say "he could be wrong" without pointing to anything specific, it doesn't hold any weight.

@Naryoril

2 жыл бұрын

I'd say rather than overlooked, it's often swept under the rug to push an agenda.

Im sure the comments will be all perfectly reasonable and coherent discussion on the complete video.

@traskforge

3 жыл бұрын

Phrhbfnxlxir bkdkzuxtzvwn bald man doodoo

@muyassarhuda1129

3 жыл бұрын

Lmao sans from undertale number talk

@oofed9250

3 жыл бұрын

Especially right now everyone got their anger out at the capitol!

@vampirelordx1

3 жыл бұрын

Hahaha!

@robertelam7929

3 жыл бұрын

im joe balden, and i approve this message

Let's look at the comments section to see what the experts think

@kane2742

3 жыл бұрын

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a hell of a thing. All the gullible conspiracy theorists who haven't taken a math class in a decade or more are suddenly mathematicians, just like how they're also epidemiologists and economists who clearly know "so much more" than people with degrees in those fields.

@boiledelephant

3 жыл бұрын

😂

@crunchymemeproductions3352

3 жыл бұрын

@@kane2742 .... Laws don't apply to the left. 😂

@jajajajajaja867

3 жыл бұрын

You think this guy is an expert? If he were a true unbiased mathematician then he would be arguing that Trumps distribution should follow the same pattern if his theory on the precincts was correct.

@Defenestrationed

3 жыл бұрын

@@jajajajajaja867 being unbiased doesn't mean that he agrees with your narrative lol

The way I see it, these things are like metal detectors. They're great at finding points of interest, but you have to start digging to see if it's a coin or a bottlecap.

@hexeddecimals

3 жыл бұрын

Perfect analogy

@Verrisin

3 жыл бұрын

@JRPGFan20000 I was gonna go with unexploded bombs, but sure, I guess a gun kind of works too. XD

@chonchjohnch

3 жыл бұрын

I think this is a fair assessment. I don’t see why people are against recounting the election

@JohnFromAccounting

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. It's a red flag detector. A red flag comes up and further investigation must be done.

@FastlaneProductions1

3 жыл бұрын

@JRPGFan20000 or two pretty best friends

Fellow data geek here, this was a TEXTBOOK example of how an analyst approaches their work. Bravo, well done!

@slevinchannel7589

2 жыл бұрын

'Some More News'. He makes the best Biden-Roasts.

@wizzotizzo

2 жыл бұрын

@@slevinchannel7589 you made it political 😐

@slevinchannel7589

2 жыл бұрын

@@wizzotizzo No, i didnt. I literally just said something about Biden-Coverage. See for yourself: the channel i named literally covers BOTH THE GOOD AND THE BAD. Yes, i said Both as in 'how unbiased news should work'.

@conception3509

2 жыл бұрын

@@slevinchannel7589 you made it political 😐

@brokencrayon3476

2 жыл бұрын

@@conception3509 you're watching a video on this topic gtfo

1:58 Let's not get distracted that there are 1000π counties in the US

@dougthedonkey1805

3 жыл бұрын

That’s wack

@cjwrench07

3 жыл бұрын

Mmmmmm, a thousand counties with pie.

@norpedholland5696

2 жыл бұрын

@@cjwrench07 Gotta catch em all.

@casteanpreswyn7528

2 жыл бұрын

I hate how close to reality this statement is.

@robspiess

2 жыл бұрын

1kπ

Thanks for mentioning my name and my work starting at 3:56 :) I did an analysis of the Maricopa County election results and got pretty much the same patterns. Here's an interesting tidbit... At 2:00 you talk about the populations of the 3,141 counties and Benford's Law. At 13:25 you talk about the digits in pi, .... and, of, course, the first four digits of pi are 3141 :) You went full circle or 2πr.

@darthcharles8004

3 жыл бұрын

WOAH it’s the man himself ...autograph?

@coreyg7364

3 жыл бұрын

only a mathematician would notice this... nice one, man.

@clockworkkirlia7475

3 жыл бұрын

You've clearly done some seriously good maths work but, honestly, those jokes. Call me irrational, but I love it when a tangent turns into a punch-line.

@FirstLast-sy3rj

3 жыл бұрын

@@ElevatedKustoms link?

@brooke1496

3 жыл бұрын

County precinct groups are too uniform. Benford described the nature of numbers on a larger scale, so if you cherry pick a city block, or man-made precinct and chart the the leading digits, it will fail as bad any of the full state chart by county assessments of in the swing states for Biden counts. Or, blue state, Trump counts. The selective adherence to the law is suspect.

They need to start bringing out maths experts on election coverage, its not like they don't have huge amounts of time.

@maxwellsequation4887

3 жыл бұрын

Mathematicians don't have time for stupid elections

@lam8138

3 жыл бұрын

@@poorman-trending nah, more like most people watching the news won’t care abt a mathematician and just arguing over nothing somehow brings in better ratings and views

@thenomad9963

3 жыл бұрын

@@poorman-trending Exactly, and I would guess a mathematician wants nothing to do with politicians for this reason--or maybe they would because they want to show them what the truth actually is?

@Soulwrite7

3 жыл бұрын

@@maxwellsequation4887 Perhaps they should, we need them voting.

@Glassesgorilla

3 жыл бұрын

@@maxwellsequation4887 Pretty sure they do. It just the general public is less likely to listen to a mathematician than a celeb or political figure, thus lower rating for news organization.

These kinds of misunderstandings are, I think, a subset of a larger problem of people getting 'evidence' confused with 'indicators.' One is often the other, but not necessarily so. The indicator should cause you to look closer, but if you look closer and find no evidence you shouldn't continue to tout the indicator.

@hedgehog3180

Жыл бұрын

Tbf in this case I think the people touting this were just dishonest from the start.

@edgunther8136

Жыл бұрын

Evidence does not equal proof

@nunyabisnass1141

Жыл бұрын

​@@hedgehog3180 depends. I personally think they were just desperate. I thought from the beginning that it would be close if trump won by any margin in 2020, but fewer in my view felt the same in 2016 leading to many not accepting that election for vert much rhe same reason trumpers didn't want to accept 2020. It's like many had selective amnesia when it comes to rhe outcomes they wanted.

@jamescollier3

5 ай бұрын

Yeah. Even The Colorado Supreme Court thinks it was a blowout. No need to interfere this time. [eyeroll]

@korkiwi

3 ай бұрын

​@@edgunther8136"The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence."

The takeaway: if you discover an anomoly, you actually have to investigate the source of said anomoly before you can accurately say you know its cause.

@jefftitterington7600

2 жыл бұрын

Studying the anomalies, rather than the commonalities, might produce some interesting insights. We know some athletes are enormously better than average. We can ask what role does economic status play into their performance?

@deedewald1707

2 жыл бұрын

I like both W J and Jeff original comments !

@crossingthemountain

2 жыл бұрын

The problem is that all places where anomalies are accused, seem to lock up and hide the data to substantiate their “certification.” Sort of like Pfizer asking for, what, 95 years or something before disclosing the study data on the vaccine? Quite equally, and scaringly similar when you think about it.. but you probably aren’t concerned or see the analogy ;)

@andyanders

2 жыл бұрын

If I understand what you're saying, I agree. For example, the anomaly in the Trump vote tallies compared to the Biden tallies may, I suspect, be explained in several ways, but most of them having to do with the programming of the voting machines, or how the results are calculated after they're input. What algorithms could be used to modify (just assuming hypothetically, not claiming they were) the election results? Would they take into consideration the possibility that some of the data coming in are invalid? How would they handle for example, a massive input illegitimate votes for one candidate over the other? Would it try to compensate by manipulating the data for both candidates to resemble expected outcomes, according to what forensic analysts might expect? The idea being to hide the cheating enough to make it look legit. I'd like to see an analysis like this this one across a larger sample, or better yet, across two larger samples, one of states that reported no "irregularities" compared with a second, of the collection of states that reported substantial irregularities. That would be interesting...

@supernovaitup

Жыл бұрын

Exactly, another great example of this is his "Perfect Bridge Game" video where he explains away the anomaly of a 1 in 2.2 x10^27 event occurring not just once, but several times.

Getting some insight behind the votes from a mathematician is refreshing.

@blabby102

3 жыл бұрын

Even better then it comes from a Standup Mathematician!

@utley

3 жыл бұрын

@Stephen Thacker how so? I live in Michigan and a lot of us are flabbergasted.

@OM-el6oy

3 жыл бұрын

@Stephen Thacker supply a mathematical proof then

@true_neutral3378

3 жыл бұрын

@Stephen Thacker I need proof plz

@tezeta3725

3 жыл бұрын

@Stephen Thacker can you explain further please?

I'm going to use this pinned comment to reply to the most-common questions/complaints. It'll be updated infrequently but I am trying to read everyone comments. - WHY DID YOU ANALYSE DATA FROM CHICAGO NOT A SWING STATE? Good question. It is because the first Benford-Biden theory I was sent was based on the Chicago precinct vote totals (there's a link way down in the video description). So I analysed the same data they did. I did not choose the Chicago dataset: people claiming election fraud did. You are very welcome to analyse data from elsewhere and show us your working. - WHY DOES TRUMPS PLOT MATCH BENFORD'S LAW? It does and it doesn't. I was going to say in the video that Trump's plot is also a bad fit for Benford: there are way too many 1s and then fewer digits from 3 up. That spike of 1s is because Trump got an overwhelming number of vote totals between 10 and 19 and so at a glance it looks like a good fit. I cut that bit though as the video was going to be as long as the election. - SOME PEOPLE ARE CRITICAL OF THAT PAPER YOU QUOTED In terms of legitimate criticism, you are probably thinking of Walter Mebane and I have linked to their papers in the video description. But they specifically disagreed with how 'Benford's Law and the Detection of Election Fraud' (2011) treats the 'second digit' check while still agreeing that "It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds." - A STRING OF DISJOINT WORDS AND EMOJIS I'm not sure how to constructively engage with that, but I'm glad you watched the video and wanted to get involved with the comments. I thought I did a pretty good job of being all-math-no-politics in the video but appreciate people are very passionate about these things. Other commenters: I encourage you to engage constructively wherever possible and 'down thumb' anything untoward. - IS THAT TRAILBREAKER ON YOUR SHELF? Yes it is. It is exactly what meets the eye.

@adelarscheidt

3 жыл бұрын

That was an enlightening video, Matt. Love from Brazil.

@joaogilbertomarques8882

3 жыл бұрын

You made math not boring. Congrats.

@Defenestrationed

3 жыл бұрын

@@Robbya10 trump's votes had a less robust distribution than Bidens in Chicago though

@jacefairis1289

3 жыл бұрын

@@Robbya10 no lol he just got like no votes in Chicago

@frank75094

3 жыл бұрын

I think it would have been more interesting to compare 2020 Biden in Chicago to 2016 Hillary in Chicago than 2020 Biden to 2020 Trump if you are going to use just one city instead of national data. Else, we are comparing apples to oranges. Good explanation otherwise on the precinct size rationale.

I really like that you compared side by side the digit pairs of pi with the last two digits of Biden votes. A very clever way to impartially show the expected variation at that sample size. Without that comparison, people surely would be looking for patterns in the noise, which as we know is a dangerous thing.

@swinde

2 жыл бұрын

If PI is carried to millions of decimal places there are many of what would seem to be improbable strings of numbers such as "1234567890" or "1122334455667788" or "666666666666", but it always breaks out of these patterns.

@insomnia20422

Жыл бұрын

Would have been hilarious if it actually lined up 100% because that would again mean someone tampered with the data lol.

@fortcolors9887

Жыл бұрын

@@insomnia20422 wym again

@GAxelic

Жыл бұрын

@@swinde yup, have 1 million monkeys randomly pressing keys on a type-writer for infinity and you get a quote from shakespear at some point

@RCynic75

10 ай бұрын

​@@GAxelicI always thought that the saying referred to the Tale of Two Cities just because of that scene from the Simpsons. "It was the best of times, it was the...blurst of times?? You stupid monkey!"

Guy makes complex statistical analysis look like algebra for beginners

@57thorns

2 жыл бұрын

Because it really is.

@jama211

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidz2690 Twit off ya spoon

@draevonmay7704

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidz2690 Damn, I hope you aren't American. Therapy might help with the insecurities, but it's pretty expensive here. I'm glad you've found a coping method in the interrum.

@draevonmay7704

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidz2690 Nice! I'm proud of you son

@dylanb2990

2 жыл бұрын

@@57thorns if it is than it’s not impressive at all that you can do it

Just took a math stat midterm and one of the trick questions hinged on verifying that the data were random! Very relevant to this video.

@anandrai492

3 жыл бұрын

Maybe you should revise, because data being random is only relevant when we’re sampling the population so we can make sure it is close to the population, but in this case of election we are looking at the entire population, meaning every single vote. We don’t sample the votes for the election, we count them.

@BenTzionZuckier

3 жыл бұрын

@@anandrai492 yeah, but if the question is "how well does chicago's districts of roughly 100 to 1000 fit Benford's law" the answer is gonna be "not well". Gotta check your data before you try to fit them to something and draw conclusions. (And the question on the exam was about predicting an election based on a survey and finding a rejection region such that alpha, the chance of a type 1 error, is less than some value bla bla - which only worked in the question if you make sure the survey was random and only then can you apply the CLT and estimate it with a Normal)

@radicalbarrel2729

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenTzionZuckier I took stats and got a B

@jtfike

3 жыл бұрын

@@BenTzionZuckier or you can just focus on something else besides the raw count like second order or summation. www.researchgate.net/publication/319526944_Benford's_Law_The_Second-Order_and_Summation_Tests

@dowskivisionmagicaloracle8593

3 жыл бұрын

Surprisingly educational video for what I thought was going to be mindless political clickbait.

"AND ELECT ION DATA" To be honest, if there were someone named "Ion Data" running for any position, I'd be very tempted to elect them based on the name alone.

@SteveDice21

3 жыл бұрын

This reminds me of that time an acquaintance called Justin Case blocked me from Facebook because I wouldn't stop unnecessarily tagging him in my comments.

@nowster

3 жыл бұрын

Elect Ions are a bit of a charged subject.

@a_human8489

3 жыл бұрын

ION DATA 2024 Science is right and the media isn’t, also humans suck

@susantummon3463

3 жыл бұрын

I would elect ion data if it weren't for all the negative energy around, everywhere in their campaign, up, down....strange....I'll get my coat...

@Codricmon

3 жыл бұрын

I, for one, welcome our new, presumably robotic, overlord.

Compared to Bidens normal distribution, Trumps vote counts are best described by a Poisson distribution, which is a pretty sophistacated roundabout way of saying, that Trump just ain't popular in Chigago.

@CarpetFTW

2 жыл бұрын

Lets take a look at crime statistics in Chicago while we are at it. Oh. Oh my.

@alienplatypus7712

2 жыл бұрын

@@CarpetFTW cope lol

@kiiyll

2 жыл бұрын

@@CarpetFTW What's the argument you're trying to make? Cmon, spit it out, don't just dogwhistle.

@isaacbunch6961

2 жыл бұрын

@@kiiyll He's just pointing out the fact that statistically, Chicago has high crime. There wasn't an argument, there was a joke.

@isaacbunch6961

2 жыл бұрын

And if we look at election results from years prior, we'll see a trend emerging. Republicans just ain't popular in Chicago.

Thank You for a non biased look at this without going political.

@craigstephenson7676

3 жыл бұрын

@@mangonel One might say facts don’t care about your feelings Also roll tide

@andersledell8643

3 жыл бұрын

@@mangonel sure doesn't feel that way when you are in a class discussing bayesian statistics...

@TracyA123

3 жыл бұрын

Roll Tide Baby!!!!!

@Naurfae

3 жыл бұрын

@@mangonel I am going to be an annoying pedant here and say that this is technically correct (the best kind of correct), but in reality people collect the data, choose how to analyze it, select the scale on graphs etc. so there is plenty of room for biases to sneak in

@Loj84

2 жыл бұрын

@@mangonel stats sure as hell isn't.

More people need to understand how statistics can mislead you, and how misleading people can make statistics lie to you

@diesel92kj1

3 жыл бұрын

@@paperburn Ironically Bill Gates favourite book is on that subject.

@philgallagher1

3 жыл бұрын

@@diesel92kj1 "92% of all statistics are made up on the spot!"

@snafu2350

3 жыл бұрын

It's a standard government/business/PR tactic: present the statistics' results but never reveal how those statistics were derived. As a simple example look at washing-machine detergent adverts (or any other adverts based on provable results rather than aesthetics): they all claim they're the best, but what is 'the best', & under what conditions? You can also move the goalposts by adjusting the size of the sample: '9 out of 10 cats prefer it' sounds great, until you realise that only 10 cats were used to test the food (& they were prolly preselected from certain specialised parameters anyway) :)

@philgallagher1

3 жыл бұрын

@@snafu2350 Interesting concept...I didn't know cats used washing machine detergent! LOL (I have to laugh at my own jokes otherwise there would be complete silence. It's a well known fact that 9 out of 10 comedians laugh at their own jokes... Is it just me or is thing going round and round in circles?)

@ishoottheyscore8970

3 жыл бұрын

@@snafu2350 It's something I enjoy about UK adverts - they do have some legal requirements about explaining where the result of the survey comes from, sometimes you even see text like "out of 87 people surveyed" when a shampoo is talking about being preferred. Radio ads are even better as you get someone trying to quickly rattle through all the legal disclaimers etc at the end, but they have to do it slow enough that you can still understand them. Still not a perfect system, and you wish the audience were better educated about sampling error etc, but it's nice to still see it

Let's check if these data are random! Statistician: I'll use chi squared test. Matt Parker: I'll use it as an excuse to put pi in my video.

@rewrose2838

3 жыл бұрын

😂

@nelsblair2667

3 жыл бұрын

“These data are”, “this datum is”

@sss29489

3 жыл бұрын

@@nelsblair2667 thanks, I have corrected.

@vahgarimo9864

3 жыл бұрын

69th like

@tensor131

3 жыл бұрын

chi_squared gives you one number to test for significance. Matt's idea (a great one) is to give us a picture of what random data actually looks like. I am very impressed. From mere observation, it looks to have the correct mean and s.d. _ a beautiful illustration.

the only thing i really learned was use a random number gen for filing false tax returns :)

I did one statistics and probability course in my third semester of engineering. All I have ever been doing now is watching statistic videos. I hate this subject. But I love it. Help.

@talinite5916

3 жыл бұрын

Lol so true about stats

@ultimategotea

3 жыл бұрын

Most annoying math to do but the most beautiful math to see

@noname-mw7oy

3 жыл бұрын

Mood

@kingdele01

3 жыл бұрын

You and me both! All my Stats professor ever talked about was gambling!

@dean7301

3 жыл бұрын

Same, but biology

But wait this doesn’t fit my biases

@pitapocketortwo

3 жыл бұрын

It also doesn't fit the facts.

@commie281

3 жыл бұрын

@@pitapocketortwo buddy, you can’t get more factual than this mathematics youtube channel.

@jamesdunning8650

3 жыл бұрын

In that case reality must be wrong.

@chocolatecrud

3 жыл бұрын

@@pitapocketortwo no, he means biases

@commie281

3 жыл бұрын

@Joshua Jason Karl i do lol and this guy agrees with the other educated sources

There's an implicit narrative here that worth making explicit. When it comes to data analytics, the proper question to ask is: why do I have the data that I do? If you simply take your data and analyze it without considering how that data was generated (both collection methodology as well as the phenomenon you wish to understand), you will probably completely misrepresent the actual reality and fail to really understand why you had that data. I suspect this happens *a lot* in practice, especially when companies do data analytics for a myriad of reasons and often have less than stellar data collection methods, let alone failing to consider the real-world process responsible for the data and what, therefore, they should expect to see.

@foundingfathers4462

3 жыл бұрын

Justin, In Chicago's Graph, Trump's Benford curve shows significantly lower 3's and 4's. That looks like Democrats are THROWING away trump votes in the 300 and 400 and 500 count precincts THUS forcing the 1's in Trumps to be abnormally high. Second, for Biden, those Blue Democrats are PADDING (adding illegal votes) in the 100's, 200"s precinct counts and making them into 300's, 400's and 500's and 600's. There are no examples in elections that show standard bell curve except Blue Democratic cities which have decades of high-level corruption outside of vote counts. Those cities are complete ghettos with decades of declining population.

@ThisIsMego

3 жыл бұрын

@@foundingfathers4462 You didn't watch the video, did you?

@JacobRy

3 жыл бұрын

@@ThisIsMego nope

@meandmyunclesbrother409

3 жыл бұрын

@@foundingfathers4462 Ghettos with declining populations? Never been to a big city have you now? News flash! Some people hate Trump! In cities with over a couple hundred thousand people, it’s a different world than most red counties. I suggest you go to a big city with your Trump flag and conspiracy theories and see how many times you get cursed out.

@GonzoTehGreat

3 жыл бұрын

@@ThisIsMego From the ignorant analysis in his comment, I don't think he'd understand the video even if he did watch it. A nice example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Love this. You can tell any story you want with data . Digging in an seeing more than 1 aspect of the data is where you start to be able to call out anomalies and ultimately see a holistic view . Well done !

I do love how you pointed out the unusualness of the data on both sides, presenting it as strange, then showing how it’s not. If you had just done this for one side or the other, and left the undisclosed one up to viewer interpretation, it would have been biased, and not an “impartial step back”

"The moral of the story is that everyone has their own agenda they want to push on you.......check out my book Humble Pi!"

@benwiarda23

3 жыл бұрын

Awesome

@deidyomega

3 жыл бұрын

I mean, at least his agenda is clear, and not harmful to the discussion

@melanieb8746

3 жыл бұрын

That’s why he didn’t do an analysis of Milwaukee.

@Hunpriest

3 жыл бұрын

@@melanieb8746 Whats up with Milwaukee?

@Hunpriest

3 жыл бұрын

What's wrong with advertising his own product in his own video? Is it really worse then all the VPN ads?

This is why statistics is a degree and profession, and not a topic.

@wow1522

3 жыл бұрын

That's true for so many current issues.

@ChaoticNeutralMatt

3 жыл бұрын

@Rye Bread lmao that was great

@ChaoticNeutralMatt

3 жыл бұрын

I'll just leave my disagreement here. Plenty of stuff you can discuss without a degree. Just because you might get it wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't discuss it

@usfaaartillerist

3 жыл бұрын

I believe that Mark Twain had an adage, “You have lies, damn lies and statistics.” Based on this it appears you can use several different number sets to argue whichever point you are trying to prove. I have found that looking at the process to outcome is ultimately the only way to actually prove a thing. But as he said, these are only used to determine if something needs to be investigated. It appears that, in the case of Chicago, that a closer look is needed.

@leocossham

3 жыл бұрын

Statistics is definitely a topic though?

Omg... I know this is an old vid and this comment will never been seen, BUT.... knowing Benford's law, the title piqued my interest. 🤔 Decided to watch and a Biden 2024 campaign ad preluded Matt's video. If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd have gone nuts!! 😂

@daniel-panek

4 ай бұрын

I get Biden ads. I get Republican ads. I get ads from religious organizations. I get ads from pseudoscientific products. They should know I don't like most of it and they still do it. At some point, they need to just pick people to show stuff to.

For a while I always thought it was crazy how powers of 2 always seemed to start with a 1 when the number of digits goes up. Thought it was pretty cool that you would get “pseudo powers of two” since the lead digit often went 1,2,4. Then one day I realized that it literally HAS to start with a 1 every single time 🤦‍♂️

@absolutehuman951

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, but the fact that 2^10 is so close to a round base ten number 1000 is a nice coincidence, isn't it? The pattern basically starts at 256, 512, 1024, 2048... And then not so nice.

@isavenewspapers8890

7 ай бұрын

Oh, I understand now. This means, "The decimal representation of the smallest integer power of two for a given number of digits always starts with a 1." That took me a while.

@bobinator133

6 ай бұрын

​@@absolutehuman951 4096 and 8192 are fine, but it gets REAL nasty after that

This guy's agenda is nothing political: he's peddling his fantastic book!

@tangyspy

3 жыл бұрын

He's British lol

@NYsummertimeCHI

3 жыл бұрын

@@tangyspy *Australian

@rokevh7800

3 жыл бұрын

@@tangyspy does his nationality affect my statement? I'm making a reference to how he mentions agendas in the video, and how this appears to be a protracted ad for his book 😂

@antonfalu123

3 жыл бұрын

Sure, that also means that, knowing the initial digits, no one has been able to distinguish it from a normal number. The non-randomness would have to be "further down".

@daltongrowley5280

3 жыл бұрын

Its a good book!

The one bit about the random data anomaly due to some employee's breakfast made me laugh out loud. Great video.

@Stargazer1312

3 жыл бұрын

Trying to rip off an auditing company sounds like a great idea

@gorillaau

3 жыл бұрын

@@Stargazer1312 Sounds like a good challenge for some.

So what I've learned is that I should use an RNG when doing my taxes. Thanks!

@boostaddict_

Жыл бұрын

this is the best comment

I had no idea about any of this. Thank you, for explaining everything so well.

"While I have you here" - I'm still here Matt, trapped. Please, release me.

@ZackScriven

3 жыл бұрын

😂

@ReachSkyla

3 жыл бұрын

The cutest comment I've ever seen

Benford's is an acid test, it can be used as an indicator of places to look, it doesn't mean they are not explainable. For forensic accountants alot of the time the evidence is circumstancial and indirect.

@tophan5146

3 жыл бұрын

this

@ub3rfr3nzy94

3 жыл бұрын

Good way of putting it.

@A.Martin

3 жыл бұрын

yea so if you see something unusual it should indicate to investigate, it is not proof in itself.

@leumgui

3 жыл бұрын

he literally says this a number of times in the video

@jimhynes3749

3 жыл бұрын

The numbers can NOT lie as they are not human.

You've done a great job here ... and it's really intriguing. Too bad most of the people who need to understand this will not bother.

@parkergoodson3428

Жыл бұрын

Yeah it’s sad

Damnit I did it. I looked down. Never look down.

As someone who lives in America, I find this video very interesting! Thank you for creating!

@ThePoshboy1

3 жыл бұрын

As someone who doesn't live in America, I too find this video very interesting!

I saw a documentary on netflix about Benford's law. I was screaming at my screen when they kept on claiming it was kinda "magical" and no one knew how and why it worked.

@nmarbletoe8210

3 жыл бұрын

lol but I guess it's true in a philosophical sense nobody knows why 1+1=2

@cfor8129

3 жыл бұрын

@@nmarbletoe8210 maths is a game and those are what the rules say, so. The astonishing thing is the ways in which we can use maths to interpret the world

@aaaaa8489

3 жыл бұрын

@@nmarbletoe8210 well, it's an axiomatic truth, the tools to prove it with logic aren't hard, just redundant

@underslash898

3 жыл бұрын

@@nmarbletoe8210 tachyos.org/godel/1+1=2.html this is literally the formal proof for why 1+1=2

@kazedcat

3 жыл бұрын

N Marbletoe There is actually a mathematical explanation on why 1+1=2. But you need to go deep and use set theory for an explanation. 1+1=2 is a mathematical statement that can be proven. Even the existence of zero is actually proven under ZFC.

My own favorite distribution for confirming human behavior is the Zipf distribution, which is what Google used to compute their guesstimated number of "hits" in their searches. Zipf has an advantage over Benford's law in that it is much more directly diagnostic to show what is actually happening in the real world.

@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache

Жыл бұрын

I was thinking about Zipf the entire time because of how closely Benford's law's distribution looked like it! Vsauce made a great video on it and Pareto's Law, really makes you think how random randomness actually is.

Will this video teach people to double check their data and sources prior to spewing nonsense into the internet? I can only dream.

This a solid, apparently impartial exploration of the topic. Would be nice if the media had as much respect for its audience as you do yours.

@Maus5000

3 жыл бұрын

@Gideon U Settle down, "free thinker"

@henryptung

3 жыл бұрын

> Would be nice if the media had as much respect for its audience as you do yours. Realistically, the general media is not going to go into a topic at the mathematical depth a math-focused KZread channel is going to. That's simply because the audiences are different.

@cirkleobserver3217

3 жыл бұрын

@@henryptung If they're incapable of or otherwise unwilling to address certain topics they should stop speaking as an authority thereof.

@geezerbill

3 жыл бұрын

Unfortunately for the media, "respect for its audience" doesn't really bring in the click-bait revenue like oversimplified sensationalism does.

@KittSpiken

3 жыл бұрын

@@Maus5000 lol trusts talking heads.

I'm a retired forensic accountant. I'd be happy to explain forensic accounting to anyone who wants to know about it. I should warn you that there's a great deal of statistics involved and attention to detail is mandatory. As a general rule, the only people interested my explanations are other accountants. After a few minutes everyone else discovers that the topic is less fascinating than they thought.

@lisamaria1972

3 жыл бұрын

Do some YT videos ;)

@professormoptop

3 жыл бұрын

I’d be interested. Took accounting in college from a forensic accountant.

@gwentarinokripperinolkjdsf683

3 жыл бұрын

Hey man i was wondering what is a good place to study this on my own, this election got me really interested

@Kuroihikage

3 жыл бұрын

I'm starting out in data and I would frankly love to chat about forensic accounting! I've done some reconciliation and QA and analysis, but none of it really involves intense stats and I'd like to do more than just make pivot tables in excel haha

@domncyt

3 жыл бұрын

Hey man, I'm actually interested in forensic accounting

My sister got me Humble Pi for Christmas, and I had no idea it was you until I got to the end of this video!

@TabooGroundhog

3 жыл бұрын

Your sister is awesome

I just realized that when you're looking at the last two digits of the Trump votes, you're just getting a Benford's Law distribution again! This makes sense (sort of) because of what Matt said about the precinct vote numbers.

@loturzelrestaurant

2 жыл бұрын

'Some More News'. He makes the best Biden-Roasts.

@alienplatypus7712

2 жыл бұрын

@@loturzelrestaurant Did you even reply to the right comment?

@ImJustCj

2 жыл бұрын

@@alienplatypus7712 its a bot

@alienplatypus7712

2 жыл бұрын

@@ImJustCj That makes sense, hard to tell bots apart from confused boomers sometimes.

@hirocheeto7795

2 жыл бұрын

@@alienplatypus7712 No boomer would watch "Some More News," but yeah.

12:15 "There was a spike at 82 because one employee was claiming their breakfast on their way to work every day, which they weren't allowed to do. You can only claim breakfast when you're on the road for work purposes." *Employee: commuting is for work purposes.*

@medleyshift1325

3 жыл бұрын

Someone needs to start their day at the home office then move to a main location on the company dime. (well $0.82) but you get the idea.

@JohnDobak

3 жыл бұрын

@@medleyshift1325 That muffin and drink cost more than $.82, the frequency of the .82 is what called attention to it.

@medleyshift1325

3 жыл бұрын

@@JohnDobak it's a play on dime sorry for not being more clear.

How to make a Matt Parker video: explain an interesting math topic and find a way to throw pi in it

@rocketpig1914

3 жыл бұрын

It would be irrational not to

@bumpsy

3 жыл бұрын

funny thing, in the book "Humble Pi", pi only really appears in the title

@JohnDlugosz

3 жыл бұрын

I'm wondering why he didn't use tau instead.

@FHBStudio

3 жыл бұрын

In videos where it isn't featured, it still is, just as iπ

@YounesLayachi

3 жыл бұрын

Gotta make it very clear to tauers he's in the pi camp

I was home schooled for high school, and my curriculum was project-based. I didn’t have to take a math class my junior or senior year, but I had been planning a statistics project for if I did do some more math. I thought it would be really interesting to take a set of statistics, probably baseball stats, and then play with the numbers to create different narratives - make it look like one team was cheating, or a ref was being unfair, and then make it look like the opposite. I thought it would be a really great exercise in critical thinking: to get experience with how data can be misrepresented so that when I see those stats in the real world I can more easily understand how it could have been presented to change the narrative. It’s really a shame I never had the time for that project

@IstasPumaNevada

Жыл бұрын

You could do it now. It'd be fun. :)

@Calyaer

10 ай бұрын

Apologies for the necropost but I just wanted to say that the idea of a project-based curriculum sounds SO much better and more engaging (at least for me, lol) than the current most common school system.

I applaud you for making a video about politics... about maths.

As a retired stats prof (hopefully not Dannycode's), I wanted to thank you for clearly explaining your process and the underlying theories. I'm always (yes, still) looking for interesting examples of phenomena. to use.

@fomori2

3 жыл бұрын

As a retired Professor, what did you think of the the presenter in this video using the second digit distribution to justify the Benford result in question for Biden, but then using the Benford result for to justify the second digit distribution in question for Trump.

@nicedubs8163

3 жыл бұрын

@@fomori2 most underrated comment so far. I'm an accountant, and elections are perfect use for it. I use it as a litmus test for finding irregularities in bulk data.

@JamesWolfpacker

3 жыл бұрын

Here’s proper use of Benford’s Law for elections. kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y5WgxpWwaamonaQ.html

@reconnell854

2 жыл бұрын

@@fomori2 what?

@spencerlively3049

2 жыл бұрын

@@JamesWolfpacker Did you learn nothing? Stop spreading misleading information as if you're not literally commenting on a video debunking the snake oil you're selling. Shoo now.

Tom Scott: "you can't trust me" Matt Parker: *writes that down*

@elmajore4818

3 жыл бұрын

Weird Idea: they "plotted" it xD

@diarykeeper

3 жыл бұрын

TS: "But you can like me" - Source: Madeup

THANK YOU for putting the "twist" in the first minute to prevent misinformation for ppl who skim (as I sometimes do). Thank you.

nothing like sorting youtube comments by recent to lose your faith in humanity

@millerbroughton8768

3 жыл бұрын

I feel called out

@Puleczech

3 жыл бұрын

One of the most real comments on youtube.

@lavaknight3682

3 жыл бұрын

Thankfully, most of them are just “interesting video, thanks!”

@daniels7568

3 жыл бұрын

Would be worse though if those comments were found at the top instead.

@ishoottheyscore8970

3 жыл бұрын

It seems to go in spells - you get batches of people who watched and understood, then you get ignorant goons posting sequential word vomit as they get triggered by something being debunked, a few complete morons who beg for the ineffectual law to tested on other states (to prove what exactly has never been revealed...), then some people who would be sued if they tried repeating their baseless claims on TV...

I getting tired of seeing the us election banner ad from KZread

@ajmoe

3 жыл бұрын

How do you turn it off?

@kourii

3 жыл бұрын

Ditto. I wish there was an 'I get it; don't show this anymore' button

@lostintime8651

3 жыл бұрын

@@ajmoe YOU CAN'T. THEY NEED TO KEEP BRAINWASHING WEAK MINDS.

@elenabob4953

3 жыл бұрын

I don't see it. Did they stopped doing that or they are doing it now only for US?

@Quintinohthree

3 жыл бұрын

@@elenabob4953 I've never seen it, must be US exclusive.

2:11 nobody asks “how is benford’s law?” 😔

@Ultiminati

3 жыл бұрын

:(

@alexpotts6520

3 жыл бұрын

Our reporters got an exclusive interview with Benford's Law. It told us it's happy that people have gotten so interested in it over the past week, but asked us all could we please learn the conditions under which it does and doesn't apply?

@susannarita4259

3 жыл бұрын

+

Thank you for explaining this! If it comes up again I knew where to point.

This video is amazing. I love how you show us something might be wrong when in fact that same wrong-ness turns out to be precisely what we should be expecting, because we can look at the data in a different way. I usually don't do statistics, so that's why I find it surprising, but nonetheless I will keep that in mind for the future.

13:20 Matt: i decided to compare it to the first 2069 digits Me: there must be a spike at 69 in random numbers chosen by people

@DavidGuild

3 жыл бұрын

...or it's the same as the number of precincts in the Chicago data set.

@arfyness

3 жыл бұрын

@@DavidGuild For this case it is. But removing one case from the set doesn't invalidate Kalpit's hypothesis. I'd be surprised if there's NOT a spike there in human chosen numbers. I'd expect to see a few others in there as well.

@liviousgameplay1755

3 жыл бұрын

​@@arfyness Might you know any places where I can find an accurate survey of random numbers? I think analyzing it might be fun before I see what others have to say about it.

@LJCyrus1

3 жыл бұрын

@@DavidGuild Or Chicago chose to have 2069 districts because it ends in 69.

@murmurmerman

3 жыл бұрын

@@DavidGuild They could have had 2070 precincts instead. But nooooooo, they had to pick a prime number...

Thank you for actually explaining the answer to a question a lot of people have. Much more useful than the little warnings social media companies have that "Election fraud is rare according to the AP" or whatever.

@fromdarktolight6353

3 жыл бұрын

Big tech thinks you are too stupid to handle it

@antiantiderivative

3 жыл бұрын

@@fromdarktolight6353 TBH most Trump supporters are too stupid to learn anything

@abcd-nn1ir

3 жыл бұрын

Shut up

@alexkaplan6581

3 жыл бұрын

"Here's a rubber stamp from our political donors, don't ask questions please."

@ivantrotlinsky6543

3 жыл бұрын

@@antiantiderivative Ah yes, you’re one of those “open-minded” and “tolerant” lefties.

Matt Parker, giving someone the benefit of the doubt and not saying they're wronger than wrong.

Thank you so much for uploading this video. It is helping me to get through the pandemic!

What I've learned from this video: don't have the same breakfast every day

@nicothoe

3 жыл бұрын

And always roll a die when choosing.

@ijemand5672

3 жыл бұрын

@@nicothoe as a Gamemaster, dice aren't that good at being random either

@silversilk8438

3 жыл бұрын

@@ijemand5672 Why aren't they random enough?

@katrinabryce

3 жыл бұрын

What I haven't learned from this video, because I knew it already: Numbers in tax returns and accounts are not random.

@raffaelepiccini3405

3 жыл бұрын

@@ijemand5672 dice are very good at being random.. a 6 sided dice has a uniform distribution to all of its faces, it's pretty good at being random unless its loaded

I love how objectively this video is made. No jumping to conclusions, no accusations, no unfounded claims, just mathematics :) and the fact you didn't just answer the question, but started digging deeper into things like the so-called Trump Tower, it really shows why you make such a good teacher!

@bluebaconjake405

3 жыл бұрын

If only other people think objectively like this

@roycebutler8590

3 жыл бұрын

@Johnny Five check Maricopa county, that one has the same problem

@csarmii

3 жыл бұрын

@Johnny Five well you can do it yourself, it's really simple, download the data, put it into excel and take a look at it.

@leongkinwai9709

3 жыл бұрын

@@roycebutler8590 Is it possible the precinct populations there are equally as clumped into an order of magnitude as Chicago's is?

@roycebutler8590

3 жыл бұрын

@@leongkinwai9709 I'd be shocked, it's a very red county, and it still wouldn't make sense because that's not really how benfords law works

I'm gonna need this video close at hand this year

@neilbiggs1353

Ай бұрын

Sadly, I think the game this year is going to be selecting people to be election observers from the Republican party who are going to be making claims in bad faith to distort the process. I wonder if the Democrats should try to invite UN observers in, though I don't know what can cut through the Republican's echo chamber. All the while places like Fox, OANN and NewsMax are seeding disinformation, a number of the voters aren't going to listen. With 2020, all the claims were easily debunked and coming from dubious places. I hope I'm wrong, but this year my bet would be there are going to be lots of supposed issues reported in count rooms etc - and lots more waste for the American taxpayer...

@guillermoelnino

Ай бұрын

@@neilbiggs1353 So claims are only false when y ou r enemy is making them. Actions are only crimes when y ou r political enemy is committing (or even just being accused of committing) them. Beliefs are false if y ou r political enemy believes them. And people are not victims unless they agree with y ou r ideology. Do y ou know what a cu lt is?

@neilbiggs1353

Ай бұрын

@@guillermoelnino I know what a cult is - it's when a group of people buy in to everything a pedagogue says without critical analysis. You know, like when they keep trying to claim an election was stolen when the evidence says otherwise, when the lawyers pushing the claims are being sanctioned, disbarred and convicted, when they are paying massive defamation suits... This isn't difficult if you have any ability to parse information...

@guillermoelnino

27 күн бұрын

@@neilbiggs1353 ok cultist

@neilbiggs1353

27 күн бұрын

@@guillermoelnino I love the intersection of ironic or moronic that you represent! Calling people cultists when you are clearly indoctrinated by one of the most incompetent liars in US political history. You'd think the blatant lies that he has been shown to have made in the New York cases would get through, but there are none so blind as people like you that will not see!

Guys stop commenting about wanting to see the comments then we won’t get to see the comments we really would like to

Been seeing benford's law in discussions about the voter irregularities, and this helped clear things up. I already figured it was mainly a tool that could point to fraud, as you brought up, but now I better understand how it could be better used.

@susannarita4259

3 жыл бұрын

+

Benford's law gets real spicy in binary!

@bluerizlagirl

3 жыл бұрын

Indeed. Hence the assumption baked into binary floating-point numbers, that the first bit of the mantissa is always 1 (or else you have 0, which is indicated by a special exponent value); so you get a free space for the sign, since you do not need to store this first bit.

@kalebbruwer

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, since every number except 0 starts with a 1. But It could actually still be useful if you look at the 2nd and 3rd digits

@bluerizlagirl

3 жыл бұрын

@@kalebbruwer In floating point, you have to throw away one possible value for the exponent, because you can't represent zero otherwise. But you can use this special exponent to indicate other things than zero, such as short integers or more than one kind of "not a number".

@kalebbruwer

3 жыл бұрын

@@bluerizlagirl In floating point, the sign and exponent are stored before the mantissa. I was talking about integers where you throw away leading zeroes. I know that's not a thing with computers, but I wasn't talking about computers.

@bluerizlagirl

3 жыл бұрын

@@kalebbruwer Floating point is basically the same principle as resistor colour codes. And even "zero ohm" links (in a resistor-like package, for machine handling) have a special marking with one black band.

Its sounds crazy to me that one person can go to a café for months and always pay the same amount down to the cents... Here we have an inflation of 3% for month...

@midge_gender_solek3314

3 жыл бұрын

In my country PS5 costs twice as much as PS4 did back in the day, so now it equals to a monthly wage, haha

@Gaston-Melchiori

3 жыл бұрын

@@midge_gender_solek3314 uff that sound rough buddy. I live in Argentina, here we have a 30% tax over the dolar (imposed last year), the PS5 is buyed in dollars so we have to pay (after all the other taxes) arround 70% more that the original price. So here its like 320.000 pesos, and the average salary (per month) its 32.000 so we need arround 10... Its not a competition, this is awfull i am just complaining... Meanwile the vice president (Cristina Fernandez) gains 1 millon pesos per month...

@alvaronavarro4895

3 жыл бұрын

@@Gaston-Melchiori Tengo un amigo Argentino, y te lo puedo confirmar. Siempre ha querido una Switch desde que salió, pero se tiene que conformar con su amada DS de diez años. Me contó que una Switch allí vale como... 300 000 y algo pesos? No estoy seguro, pero mucho. Y un juego vale como triple de lo que vale en España, que son sesenta euros, un juego triple A, que no es poco.

@Gaston-Melchiori

3 жыл бұрын

@@alvaronavarro4895 si lo se, yo soy Argentino y (tadavía) vivo en Argentina. No te sabría decir cuanto sale nada la verdad, en mi trabajo todas las semanas llegan aumentos de 5% y 10% de los proveedores, porque no basta con la inflación infernal, tambien hay que soportar a los empresarios que especulan y por si acaso te arrancan la cabeza con los precios.

@mateonoguera4236

3 жыл бұрын

@@Gaston-Melchiori yo tambien soy argentino pero vivo en Washington DC. Muy interesante encontrar otros argentinos en los videos de numberphile!! Entiendo el dolor de vivir en argentina en estos momentos, esta toda mi familia en cordoba. Ojala algo cambie pero mas probable que no. Mejor todavia seria poder traerlos a usa pero ya sabemos como es.

Oh, wow ... so cool! Enjoyed the show. Thanks for sharing. :) Going to try and find your book too! :)

I'm just glad to have made it into one of Matt's videos. I'm one of the data points on the chart!

@standupmaths

3 жыл бұрын

Glad you could spot yourself as a datapoint. Like a bar-chart version of Where's Waldo?.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

3 жыл бұрын

If I zoom in really close I think I can see you.

@Codricmon

3 жыл бұрын

“Hey, I can see my vote from up here!“

@JimCullen

3 жыл бұрын

@@standupmaths Who the eff is Waldo?

@gabrielpeterson2079

3 жыл бұрын

@@standupmaths Sad that only people from Chicago can feel the love here, though I kind of understand why other cities and counties are out of the question.

As long as people investigate and aim for transparency that's fine by me. No single data point is going to be sufficient.

@hackerman1770

3 жыл бұрын

Scotus has ruled in favor Benford's Law several times including Enron case and it was way more tame then the 4+ deviations we are seeing in some the big cities in swing states

@Kaoskadosk

3 жыл бұрын

Hacker, you *did* watch this video, right...?

@cozmik_kay

3 жыл бұрын

@@Kaoskadosk hope u know Trump's result may have actually been tampered with and that's y I wasn't random anymore... Please do a critical thinking of this, who cheats himself out of an election on a slim chance of winning in court?

@JathTech

3 жыл бұрын

@@cozmik_kay i agree, but the examples in the video are bad because no one is contesting Chicago's results.

@Kaoskadosk

3 жыл бұрын

@@lostalone9320 Yeah, except in this case it's regarding election data, which as this video points out, is pretty pointless to apply Benford's law to.

I'll admit it, I came here as a skeptic....but you convinced me. Well done video.

@GeatMasta

Жыл бұрын

So did i; it makes me reflect on how much of a better place we’d be in if everyone took the other side’s concerns seriously and addressed them instead of trying to discredit them.

I love what you did with the trump data to show how easy it is for something to look suspicious without more context and why you need to listen to people who know about data rather than just trying to draw your own uninformed conclusions. Love the video!

@mr.j5919

Жыл бұрын

Where have you been? The only non-biased people we have left, in this field, disagree with this guy 100%

@sissyphus2926

Жыл бұрын

​@@mr.j5919 who are those people?

@ethanlarge3572

Жыл бұрын

@@mr.j5919 Please name one person. Literally one math expert who 100% disagrees with this guy.

@user-dh7sm9zh9e

Жыл бұрын

@@mr.j5919 Name one and give us a source

@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache

Жыл бұрын

@@mr.j5919 Where have you been?

I have a lot of respect for the fact that you didn't just stop at "the trump one looks suspicious!" and actually explained why both claims are faulty. That kind of honesty, regardless of where you stand politically, is something we need WAY more of in today's world.

@PayNoTax-GetNoVote

3 жыл бұрын

I think that's what Trump is looking for. A validation of EVERY SINGLE LEGALLY cast vote. The only thing I will believe is if they contact every voter to verify their votes.

@iMasterchris

3 жыл бұрын

@@PayNoTax-GetNoVote while that would be great, wouldn’t you say that’s impractical? Should we do that for people who voted in 2016? What if people change their answers over the phone because some guy is haranguingthem? What if people, knowing that race was so close, change their initial vote? Jesus, get real. He lost, hopefully the investigations complete and assure everyone that, yes, that’s true. Assuming he didn’t lose without evidence is conspiracy thinking

@dizzyonaball4623

3 жыл бұрын

@@iMasterchris Also, the way some people are talking now, if some random 'phones my house and asks about my voting, I'd put the phone down and draw the curtains

Lol "problematic at best" is going to be my new motto

@delphicdescant

3 жыл бұрын

It's the subtitle of my life.

@knifeyonline

3 жыл бұрын

@@delphicdescant i'm getting it printed on a tshirt

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

3 жыл бұрын

Tinder bio

@MrRetluocc

3 жыл бұрын

If you want an official motto for a family crest: "Difficilis ad Optimus"

@rocketpig1914

3 жыл бұрын

Sadly though even those words now have become politicised

Interesting video. Benford curves are a really odd thing that people cite at times with very little understanding of it. It only works in VERY unique circumstances with VERY specific sets of data.

really good video. It'd be nice to see the plotted axis names to follow more easily : )

Regardless of this data, the one's who don't want to verify and look into anomalies have something to hide.

@garsm2290

3 жыл бұрын

You are referring to Trump's tax returns?

@nlsantiesteban

3 жыл бұрын

Right! Which is why I don't trust these "scientists" with their round earth theories. They're tired of me asking them to verify the data according to my needs, say it's a waste of money. I know they're got something to hide.

@NeverSuspects

3 жыл бұрын

@@garsm2290 The IRS does that automatically, even more so for those with large finances. The fact that Trump was never charged EVER means his tax history and payments were all lawful. Despite it not being public what anyone owes or has paid in taxes, the IRS and the government does and concerning Trump's business of property and building development much of is in New York, you can't simply not report and you can't just tell the city your building doesn't exist so you don't have to pay that years property tax. I guess a bunch of naive college kids who own nothing and assume mostly everything about much of what they think is true wouldn't really understand this yet or bother to think it out.

@satanspilz

3 жыл бұрын

@@nlsantiesteban Noel, come on. Your claims of the earth not being round is hardly comparable to either holding or not holding the most powerful office in the world for the next four years.

@DynamicDandalf

3 жыл бұрын

@@nlsantiesteban you mean the round earth that was investigated and debunked by people asking questions and then getting people to prove it?

I just borrowed the audio version of Humble Pi from our public library! Looking forward to listening to it!

@adamwashington273

3 жыл бұрын

Well God bless you all

Weird that no dates start with 4 or 5

I clicked on this video just for the comments

@formerlypie8781

3 жыл бұрын

God I did too and I regret it because I cant stop now

@timothyjacksondrake4454

3 жыл бұрын

You should watch the video, its pretty good.

@captainkeller2792

3 жыл бұрын

@@timothyjacksondrake4454 yeah it is.

Thank you for being an entertaining educator, the world needs more of the same.

Lessons learned from this video: Use Benford's law to detect weird data results and then research why the results are the way they are to find out if anything is wrong. Context people, context matters

@jypsridic

3 жыл бұрын

Lefties don't want answers, they just want you to accept the results when they favor the regressive left and ignore all discrepencies

@lpcruz5661

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed. Statistical models are not definitive last court of appeals. It is as you said, research why they are that way and this Law is still a good rule of thumb. What is good for the gander should be good for the goose, my question in this presentation is but why would Trump's numbers follow Benford's all things being equal it should behave like Biden's too.

@danielpickrell8311

3 жыл бұрын

BLM= Benfords Law Matters too

@LoveJoyPeace4612

3 жыл бұрын

@@lpcruz5661 this question is literally answered in the video. Watch the video before commenting. Otherwise, you come across as simply willfully ignorant for asking questions that have already been addressed.

@lpcruz5661

3 жыл бұрын

@@LoveJoyPeace4612 I have indeed watched it till the end. I believe my comment is fair. He explains why Biden' does not. Then you can explain to me why Trump follows Benford's? Did he include p-values? He quoted a 2011 paper, well there are recent researches on Benford Law, see this journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151235

This came up on my feed, and I immediately thought, "You can't use Benford's Law for elections. That doesn't work." But I watched your video anyway, because I thought I'd figure out how to pick apart your math and assumptions. I was surprised that this was an educational video, and not a propaganda one. Thank you for a concise, and clearly-explained analysis. :D

@sphinxy2465

3 жыл бұрын

I came here for the same reason when it randomly popped up on my feed. I thought this was going to be straight propaganda

@ribbonsofnight

2 жыл бұрын

It is propaganda; propaganda to use statistics correctly.

I always find it an interesting human trait of utilizing data, or our own logic basically, but only as far as it suits our purposes, and then stopping there. It's hard, but we have to stay on the bus to Truth even as it sometimes speeds past our favorite 'streets' where we, personally, would like the bus to stop.

@RengokuGS

2 жыл бұрын

really good metaphor

@hedgehog3180

Жыл бұрын

That's why peer review exists and more generally when it comes to science you work together with other people who will ruthlessly attack your ideas to see if they hold up. It's really difficult to be an honest critic of yourself so you need other people.

As a normal person, I was thinking about this exact question.

Fantastic video. Textbook example that a light touch is often better than a heavy hand when engaging with such topics. Many youtubers seem to cripple their own perfectly valid points with unnecessary subjective filler.

@MrYport

3 жыл бұрын

This is what I've been trying to say about all discourse in America these days. Thank you for putting it into words

@foundingfathers4462

3 жыл бұрын

Here is a far better video on Benford's Law. See STEP #1 for the video on Benford's Law www.foundingfathers.org/Papers/Politics/BenfordsLaw_n_ElectionFraud.aspx

@Mmmm1ch43l

3 жыл бұрын

@@foundingfathers4462 singingbanana, nice yeah, that's a good video, from a great mathematician (also happens to be a friend of Matt Parker) not sure, why it would be far better though, says pretty much the same thing from what I remember. In particular it also says that the data has to span multiple orders of magnitude, which is why you wouldn't be able to use it in this case

@silversilk8438

3 жыл бұрын

what do you mean "unnecessary subjective filler"?

@gtothereal

3 жыл бұрын

@@silversilk8438 anything that could make the video sound like it has an agenda or anything that sounds condescending. It’s an easy way to get people to refuse to accept your points. Even if they’re otherwise accurate.

Loved the explanation. Also loved the Jurassic Park VHS and Japanese Trailbreaker toy (at least, I think that's what it is, was never able to focus on it).

LOve how the video just START! thank you sir

If my stats classes were this interesting, I wouldn't have hated stats. ;)

@COPESLANDmovemaKER

3 жыл бұрын

If this comment wasn’t so stale, it wouldn’t be stale.

@DannyCodePlays

3 жыл бұрын

@Mr. Natural Completely agree! But if my Technical Communications minor taught me anything, you should capture your audience from the start. Plus, this particular video isn't presenting anything that a layperson couldn't readily understand. It would be a nice intro to a stats class, IMHO.

@DannyCodePlays

3 жыл бұрын

@Mr. Natural I think we are just going to have to agree to agree, sir. :)

@holycrapthatsalotofketchup253

3 жыл бұрын

the derivitives and anti derivitives of "ln" and stuff... ik what you mean, i got a 1 in my ap stats test :(

@rhdtv2002

3 жыл бұрын

My son has a Master Degree in Stats

It would be interesting to look at the corresponding data from previous elections

as soon as you brought up the "trump tower" graph i knew what was going on and laughed out loud. "it's because he didn't get above 2 digits in most precincts! he got 30/40/50's in most places!"

So, in data of inconsistent magnitudes, Benford's law may be useful. In data of similar magnitudes, the randomness of the last two digits may be more useful. Very interesting

@TheCommono

3 жыл бұрын

Get a grip... 14:42

@cyber33l

3 жыл бұрын

@@TheCommono Notice they said may, not is. Like in many of the tax based examples, using that check led to investigating an oddity with an easily discovered explanation. This shows that the method of checking the last two is more useful for similar magnitude numbers, which is a fairly obvious conclusion given the way the math works. In the predictable setting of Trump votes in Chicago (When we know that large cities trend blue), this kind of result should be a given. For unknown outcomes however, This method would be very useful for noticing unexpected oddities, and that is the point.

@TheCommono

3 жыл бұрын

@@cyber33l I do not understand, why "more" - ?

"You only get Benford's Law in SOME situations." So it's Benford's poorly enforced law?

@Speederzzz

3 жыл бұрын

Benford's understaffed police station

@Incomudro1963

3 жыл бұрын

Benford's suggestion.

@mickcoram3579

3 жыл бұрын

Lets build a wall around it

@bananya6020

3 жыл бұрын

benford's US police force

@barryon8706

3 жыл бұрын

In Minnesota they'd defunded enforcement of statistical laws, and now there are outliers running wild.

When I saw Biden's Benford distribution being used on twitter arguments and was googling expert opinions, I was expecting more depressing political articles but instead I discovered this delightful mathematics youtube channel I feel quite lucky to have stumbled here

@98danielray

3 жыл бұрын

@@420atheism just like the people that mentioned the law in the first place

@lw7238

3 жыл бұрын

BIDEN WINS.....BIDEN IS THE 46th PRESIDENT.

@StormTheSquid

3 жыл бұрын

@@420atheism It's almost as if you haven't watched the video!

@Cr42yguy

3 жыл бұрын

Matt is amazing and the math puns (and Parker Square memes) are really funny.

@chinuchun

3 жыл бұрын

@@420atheism As a fellow stoner i can only recommend you to take a smoking break for a month and think about your life decisions. Because i think some are not the best

Most areas were also heavily divided. You had either lots of small areas where trump would win (which would explain why he follows the law) and Biden won in just about every large metropolitan area with you guessed it, large precincts. Interesting video.

@LastStar007

2 жыл бұрын

Did a double take when your comment said Trump "follows the law".

@jypsridic

2 жыл бұрын

@@LastStar007 Trump does follow the law. Biden is the one who flouts the constitution on a daily basis

@hdjsksoxckjrejwkdld

2 жыл бұрын

@@jypsridic Did you ever take a second to enjoy a joke before you took it seriously?

@jypsridic

2 жыл бұрын

@@hdjsksoxckjrejwkdld Do you know what the word joke even means?

@zagreus5773

2 жыл бұрын

@Jyps Ridic Look into the mirror and you know what it means.

I got my copy of Humble Pi here in Arizona in the USA, and they only had the Airplane version, yea with the S after Math.