{"id":112,"date":"2009-07-20T22:20:19","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T21:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=112"},"modified":"2009-07-20T22:20:19","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T21:20:19","slug":"iranian-elections-number-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Iranian elections, number analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m catching up on stuff which I’ve noted down before and thought “Damn, that’s interesting – must share that with people.” This is one of those things which you read and feel both impressed and depressed by. Pretty persuasive evidence from the Washington Post that the Iranian elections were rigged, from looking at last digit analysis.<\/p>\n

This may seem strange, because these digits usually don’t change who wins. In fact, last digits in a fair election don’t tell us anything about the candidates, the make-up of the electorate or the context of the election. They are random noise in the sense that a fair vote count is as likely to end in 1 as it is to end in 2, 3, 4, or any other numeral. But that’s exactly why they can serve as a litmus test for election fraud. For example, an election in which a majority of provincial vote counts ended in 5 would surely raise red flags.<\/p>\n

Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m catching up on stuff which I’ve noted down before and thought “Damn, that’s interesting – must share that with people.” This is one of those things which you read and feel both impressed and depressed by. Pretty persuasive evidence from the Washington Post that the Iranian elections were rigged, from looking at last digit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43],"tags":[41,42,863],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-analysis","tag-iran","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAkBY-1O","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":481,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=481","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":0},"title":"So the General Election’s on Thursday…","author":"MattWPBS","date":"May 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Come along kind of quickly I think. If you're in the UK, I hope you're going to vote this time, even if you're opposed to the current political system. There's a really simple reason why it's worth it - this time around it looks like voting reform has a good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=43"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=486","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":1},"title":"Sky News appear to be cracking up","author":"MattWPBS","date":"May 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently, these presenters are presenting neutral views of the election, with no bias towards the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Adam Boulton insisting that the Conservatives won the election: Kay Burley insisting that protesters should \"go home and watch it on Sky News\": (and failing to be able to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=43"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=47","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":2},"title":"One vote never changed anything…","author":"MattWPBS","date":"June 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm sick of this. I'm sick of this excuse for not taking part in an election. I'm sick of this method people use for shirking responsibility in the democratic process. I'm sick of this when people are shocked that extremists succeed when the majority do not vote. So here's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":438,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=438","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":3},"title":"iPlayer: 15th February","author":"MattWPBS","date":"February 17, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm now back at a job where I can listen to the iPlayer while working, so I'll be sharing some recommendations again. You And Yours I wouldn't normally recommend You And Yours in something like this, but there's an interesting topic involved here. About a year ago You And Yours\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "iPlayer Recommendations"","block_context":{"text":"iPlayer Recommendations","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=54"},"img":{"alt_text":"Radio 4","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mattwpbs.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Radio4-new-logo-with-frequency.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":484,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=484","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":4},"title":"Coalitions, and the mandate.","author":"MattWPBS","date":"May 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"There's talk in the opinion pages about the possibilities of coalitions between parties in Parliament, some of which are quite disturbing. A key example is Benedict Brogan's in the Telegraph here. The quote I'd really like to draw your attention to, and which I think does not work in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?cat=43"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?p=34","url_meta":{"origin":112,"position":5},"title":"Vanity Fair on the Icelandic economy","author":"MattWPBS","date":"March 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a rather good article here. Yet another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"economy\"","block_context":{"text":"economy","link":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/?tag=economy"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattwpbs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}