4 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2020–2021score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters cite it as a clear debunking of election-fraud statistics and as a warning against comparing percentages without context.
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths examines scatter plots that were claimed to show fraudulent vote-switching in Michigan's 2020 election. He recreates the analysis and shows that the pattern arises from comparing percentages across different bases, not from fraud.
“here's a video that debunks many of his claims” (HN, 2020)
The way this is presented is going to be interpreted incorrectly. It is incorrect to compare percentages or probabilities like this. Here is a different example to try and illustrate the problem: Is 10% larger than 5%? It is not possible to answer this question if the basis on which the percentages are calculated are different. What if I said the 10% was 10% of whatever you last spent money on, but the 5% was 5% of Google's annual revenue. Which is larger? The same thing is happening in the above - it isn't okay to calculate the probabilities in two situations and then try to cross compare them for size. Sadly this error seems to be cropping up quite a lot! Matt Parker (Stand-up Maths) has an example of this and related to a recent election: [this video] . His explanation is likely better than mine.
Explains why comparing percentages across different bases misleads
I really hope something is done against Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai's content. He's been posting highly misleading/disingenuous election fraud material in order to gain a following, and people are believing it because he touts his PhD from MIT. Honestly at this point between his senate run and "Inventor of Email" scandal I'm surprised MIT hasn't had a response. For example, here's a video that debunks many of his claims: [this video]
I am replying for the sake of the hidden sibling comment: I don't watch any major media coverage of politics, but a mathematician and comedian I follow on YouTube (from a different country who presumably has no horse in the race) has analyzed some of the numerical allegations of fraud: - [link] - [this video] - [link]
A mathematician analyzes numerical fraud allegations
Don't. Compare. Percentages. Stand-up Maths called this out recently and it's good to mention. I think this might be the video: [this video] Give me the output and our total consumption please.
Warns against comparing percentages without context
> Can you link me to those majority of cases? [this video] [link] And this third one just shows how much of a joke some of the claims in the lawsuits are: [link] Like, this is basic high school level statistics they can't even get right.
This is just bad, bad, bad math. Try running the exact same analysis for Biden votes. Turns out that drops too. "The one thing they should never do is drop" turns out to be completely incorrect! [this video]
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