Benfords law is a perfect example of something that is cool and compelling and then gets applied inappropriately all over the place by people who don’t know better. Voting, for example.
> Benfords law is a perfect example of something that is cool and compelling and then gets applied inappropriately all over the place by people who don’t know better.
Yes, but an Ivy-League educated Professor of Economics who created Yale's first course on the stock market under the mentorship of a nobel prize winner (for his work on the stock market) and whose research specialty is statistics and financial markets should be able to use Benford's law correctly.
That this analysis was then repeated by Columbia is also pretty strong credibility.
Usually because the pop-description is, as usual, misleading. People find data covering "several orders of magnitude" and just assume by some cosmic fact that Benford's law should apply, despite the mechanics being their data having no reason to imply that the law holds.
Yes, but an Ivy-League educated Professor of Economics who created Yale's first course on the stock market under the mentorship of a nobel prize winner (for his work on the stock market) and whose research specialty is statistics and financial markets should be able to use Benford's law correctly.
That this analysis was then repeated by Columbia is also pretty strong credibility.