[generally]

Trump tallies follow Benford's Law.

Biden tallies do NOT follow Benford's Law.

Not that we FReeQs had any doubt.

Benford's Law has been used successfully in court, iirc.

[WildHighlander57]

Many thanks!!!!!

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

Not in MY court.
At least until they learn to spell.

[grey_whiskers]

Thanks, generally.

Benford’s Law is valid.

It has to do with the fact that when you’re counting things,

you go through the 1 in the lead digit first, then 2 in the lead digit, then 3,...

like, if you’re counting to 100, you first count ALL the teens before you even start on any number in the twenties.

And you have to finish all the twenties (”twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, ...”) before you can start counting anything in the thirties.

And so on.

Well, a lot of the time you finish whatever you’re counting before you ever get to 80 or 90, say.

So, on *average*, you’re going to have a LOT more buckets, where “1” came up as the first number, than anyone else.

“But,” you ask, “what if you get to over 100? Doesn’t that change things?”

Yep. It makes the ones show up even MORE.

Count with me.

ONE hundred.
ONE hundred and one.
ONE hundred and two.
ONE hundred and three.
ONE hundred and four...

Yep. Add another 100 “1”s to your pile before you reach 200.
And so on.

What if it’s 1000?

Yep, same thing.

And THAT’s why in random counts, the first digit is most often a 1.