Re: The Prize #3

[Robert Creager <Robert_Creager@LogicalChaos.org>]

When grilled further on (Sun, 19 Sep 2004 16:46:25 +0930),
Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au> confessed:

> tom wrote:
> > 6) The improvement must be real.  We Will figure out a way to test the
> > result. In other words, no hidden code that makes the result look good.
> 
> 
> One useful check of the numbers would be a test for conformance with Benford's
> Law. Which nowadays is widely used to check for fraud involving massive 
> collections of numbers. For an introduction, read these:

Hmmm...  In all the queries below, fd column is 'first digit'.

I didn't expect the magnitude to work, but the error worked nicely.  Of course,
I suspect I could fake these now that I know about this ;-)

My magnitude range for V covers 2.84 to 16.3791, I covers 1.89 to 14.60

tasv=# select count(*), substring( mag_v::text from 1 for 1) as fd from
catalog where mag_v != 99 group by fd order by fd;
 count  | fd 
--------+----
 691920 | 1
      1 | 2
      5 | 3
     39 | 4
    159 | 5
   1039 | 6
   4213 | 7
  14633 | 8
  40641 | 9

tassiv=# select count(*), substring( mag_i::text from 1 for 1) as fd from
catalog where mag_i != 99 group by fd order by fd;

count  | fd 
--------+----
 607613 | 1
      9 | 2
     43 | 3
    164 | 4
    786 | 5
   3618 | 6
  15105 | 7
  38370 | 8
  86765 | 9

Moving on to the smag (error from DAOPHOT):

tassiv=# select count(*), substring( smag::text from '[1-9]' ) as fd from obs_v
group by fd order by fd;
  count  | fd 
---------+----
 2064216 | 1
 1663100 | 2
 1444893 | 3
 1165236 | 4
  928826 | 5
  742990 | 6
  592820 | 7
  468684 | 8
  373451 | 9

tassiv=# select count(*), substring( smag::text from '[1-9]' ) as fd from obs_i
group by fd order by fd;  
  count  | fd 
---------+----
 1971130 | 1
 1651006 | 2
 1524232 | 3
 1265356 | 4
  980525 | 5
  737823 | 6
  553203 | 7
  424793 | 8
  336634 | 9

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