BEER Ch. 5 Benford's Law

[Dave Monroe]

"The first thing that jumps out of the bushes, waggling its dick so to
speak, is a Benford's Law anomaly in some expenses." (BE, Ch. 5, p.
41)


"Yentas with Attitude"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/14/154955498/whats-a-yenta

Yenta or Yente (Yiddish: יענטאַ) is a Yiddish female name which is
used generically for an old gossip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenta
http://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_5#Page_41

Cf. ...

http://www.nwaworld.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.W.A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MrQtOoQRpc


Benford's Law

Benford's Law, also called the First-Digit Law, refers to the
frequency distribution of digits in many (but not all) real-life
sources of data. In this distribution, the number 1 occurs as the
leading digit about 30% of the time, while larger numbers occur in
that position less frequently: 9 as the first digit less than 5% of
the time. Benford's Law also concerns the expected distribution for
digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law

Benford's law of controversy

Not to be confused with Benford's law.

Benford's law of controversy is an adage from the 1980 novel Timescape, stating:

    Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real
information available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law_of_controversy#Benford.27s_law_of_controversy

Testing Benford's Law

http://testingbenfordslaw.com/

Heavy handed editing? Not like Pynchon to explicitly define jargon
(hash total and Luhn checks slip past without comment on the very next
page).

http://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_5#Page_41

Benford's Law and Zipf's Law

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/zipfLaw.shtml

Zipf's Principle of Least Effort

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Zipf%27s_Principle_of_Least_Effort

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_29-37#Page_32


"False Lunchmeat" (p. 42)

Phony baloney

http://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_5#Page_42


hash totals

This is just a batch total done on one or more numeric fields which
appears in every record. This is a meaningless total, e.g., add the
Telephone Numbers together for a number of Customers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_validation#Validation_methods


Luhn checks

The Luhn algorithm or Luhn formula, also known as the "modulus 10" or
"mod 10" algorithm, is a simple checksum formula used to validate a
variety of identification numbers, such as credit card numbers, IMEI
numbers, National Provider Identifier numbers in US and Canadian
Social Insurance Numbers. It was created by IBM scientist Hans Peter
Luhn and described in U.S. Patent No. 2,950,048, filed on January 6,
1954, and granted on August 23, 1960.

The algorithm is in the public domain and is in wide use today. It is
specified in ISO/IEC 7812-1. It is not intended to be a
cryptographically secure hash function; it was designed to protect
against accidental errors, not malicious attacks. Most credit cards
and many government identification numbers use the algorithm as a
simple method of distinguishing valid numbers from collections of
random digits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm

LUHN-10 Error Detection Tool

http://www.ee.unb.ca/cgi-bin/tervo/luhn.pl
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l