Stand-up Maths
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2021
18:16 · 906K views · Nov 15, 2020
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.
HN commenters cite it as a clear debunking of election-fraud statistics and as a warning against comparing percentages without context.
6 comments from Hacker News
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.
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]
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.
> 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.