The Devil Is in the Digits - Statistical analysis of the Iranian election results

I like your manner.

I think I just misinterpret it sometimes.

I believe this is incorrect. I don't think they claimed that they recounted these ballots at all to arrive at the 3 million vote figure, just that the totals in those 50 or so cities exceeded the amount of registered voters in those cities by about 3 million.

This is unremarkable. There isn't just one model used for this kind of thing and there are plenty of varying theories.



Well in your attempt to pass off your brainfart as a joke you only dig deeper, because you are wrong in the premise of this supposed "joke".

There are many varying statistical theories that are not mutually exclusive, and there is absolutely no reason to try to pass this off as a joke except for the fact that this was a theory that I had already debunked and that Thomas too was able to dismiss out of hand very simply. The joke it seems is only on you in that you were not.




How do you reach this conclusion when clearly don't understand a whit of what we are discussing?



Once again, I've said as much many times. For the political process this kind of evidence for fraud doesn't matter. But for those who do understand the very basics of statistical analysis it is interesting.

Just because you can't comprehend it doesn't mean it shouldn't matter to anyone else.

I've not said that it shouldn't matter to anyone else, nor have i susggested that it shouldn't be discussed. Perhaps you have commented that fraud has become the functional truth, but i've not seen it. The rest of your puerile insults are not worth comment.

So when you are rude it's germane but when others are it's puerile? That is a convenient, if self-serving, position to take but at least it lets you beg off from admitting that you didn't understand why Benford's Law was irrelevant, posted it to the thread as if it were, and then tried to pass it off as a joke with premise just as faulty as the use of Benford's Law was in the first place.

Can you explain to me why you allege that i have been rude? Because i failed to agree with your thesis? Is no one to question what you allege? Frankly, i consider not just Benford's law to have been irrelevant to this issue, but also the claims made in the Washington Post article which you posted to have been irrelevant. I consider such claims to be no more convincing that any claims presented by the media for whom you have in this and other threads shown contempt. Believe it or not, i have a right to express such a point of view, whether or not you think i should. As for passing anything off as a joke, i found the premise of this thread to be a joke to begin with. I guess that's what you consider to have been rude on my part, huh? To have not taken seriously the silly premise you have here? Have i sinned, oh great internet guru?

Not likely, if you've gotten this far being a jerk I don't suspect you will change.



I am not alleging that you have been rude to me, but that you are frequently rude enough to others that I can't bring myself to be anything but rude to you in turn.



Of course, because you don't understand them you decide that in a thread about statistical analysis of Iranian elections the best statistical analysis produced so far is irrelevant.



I don't have contempt for the media in this at all, I have contempt for you. A good example of why is how you insist on trying to make this about me supposedly condescending (and now graduating to "contempt") to the media.

You haven't anything of value to contribute to the discussion of statistical analysis but have found a stupid bone to try to argue about and as per usual won't let go no matter how clueless you have been exposed to be on this subject.



I've never said otherwise. I, in turn, have the right to express just how stupid it is.



You fell for the Benford's Law tripe and passed it off as a joke. Your explanation for your "joke" is clearly flawed and now you are just trying to change the subject.

You, as you are so fond of calling others, are a clown.



No, I've told you I hold a dim opinion of you for some time, and it has nothing to do with this thread. It has to do with your incessant nastiness to others and here you have nothing of worth to contribute here except your charming personality. Derision is your only stock and store.

I take this to mean that you can't actually justify your charge that i had been rude, upon which you justify your puerile insults. That doesn't surprise me.

I understand statistical analysis, even if you for sake of your rudeness you want to suggest that i don't. It simply amuses me that you think the media are to be chastised for their assumptions about fraud, but that you take this statistical evidence as conclusive. That is why i referred to condescension. It is as much as you saying, you (new media) don't know what the hell you're talking about, but i do know what i'm talking about and i can "prove" the case which you fail to make. I'm not buying it. I didn't fall for any tripe about Benford's law, i simply noted that it was cited and linked in the article i posted. I consider that article to be as silly an exercise as the article from the Washington Post. I know it somehow gratifies you to suggest that i don't understand topics being discussed, but that is irrelevant. Neither the article which i linked which cited Benford's law, nor your Washington Post article, conclusive make a case that fraud were perpetrated in the Iranian election. Pathetic attempts at insult to the effect that derision is my only stock in trade don't make that true, and they don't make your case here.

No, it means I just think you are so rude that it is a waste of time trying to convince you that you've been rude. In my experience with you here I don't ever recall you showing the introspection like that of even considering whether you are being a total ass or not and I just don't want to waste my time trying to convince a jerk that he is rude. If you don't know by now that you are on the higher end of the rude spectrum I don't know that you ever will.



Not for the sake of rudeness, but because your posts here demonstrate a very low level of understanding of it that is annoying given the strengths of conviction you are willing to exhibit even when in over your head.



I never once claimed it was conclusive, clown. And you are the one trying to foist a grudge against the media on me, as I've already explained I am a skeptical person at heart and am doing research because I like to avoid the dangers of bias that I have and that I feel the Western media shares.

I want to believe the opposition narrative, so does most of the West. I am merely interested from an academic perspective in knowing more. You, lacking anything to add but derision, decided to make this about "contempt" for the media.



You project much? I don't think I can prove it, and in case you haven't noticed, clown, I am relying on the media to bring me this kind of information because I lack the time and expertise to unearth it myself.

I have repeatedly said that I find the prospect of conclusively determining whether or not there was fraud through statistical analysis to be very dubious. This is just more nonsense you are trying to put in my mouth clown.



You invented it.



Liar.



Which again shows you have no understanding at all of either of them. Benford's Law makes no sense to apply here because the law relates to a logarithmic distribution and these results just aren't supposed to conform to that model.

However the last digit analysis is something that the results and the model can actually be compared to.

You don't get it so you just deride it as a "joke" but for those who do the joke is on you, and I haven't the maturity to avoid deriding you for your folly.



The gratification is, but that you don't know what you are talking about here is relevant.




I never said it did and you are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation. You are moving the goal posts to claims I have not made to knock down.



In this you are right, it's just the icing on the cake to make fun of a blowhard who is in over his head and comically can't stop digging. What is even more amusing is watching you ironically claim that me aping your method of insulting others is puerile and doesn't merit a response while rejecting the notion that your own insults are rude. A true pathetic clown you are, if it's puerile and worthless when it's done to you then it's the same when you do it to others.

analysis of doublets and triplets, insufficient fives and zeroes, a decided lack of running numbers except in the streets, standard errors claiming iranians uttered lies damn lies and statistics, disputed returns about who invented the zero


only an ingenue in paradise such as i does not wonder what the ultimate throw of the three dice will be

http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug09/iran/index.html?nl=1