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arXiv · 2207.09696

Do Pulsar and Fast Radio Burst dispersion measures obey Benford's law?

Pragna Mamidipaka·Shantanu Desai
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Abstract

We check if the first significant digit of the dispersion measure of pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (using the CHIME catalog) is consistent with the Benford distribution. We find a large disagreement with Benford's law with $\chi^2$ close to 80 for 8 degrees of freedom for both these aforementioned datasets. This corresponds to a discrepancy of about 7$\sigma$. Therefore, we conclude that the dispersion measures of pulsars and FRBs do not obey Benford's law.

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Pragna Mamidipaka, Shantanu Desai. 2022-07-20. Do Pulsar and Fast Radio Burst dispersion measures obey Benford's law?. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.astropartphys.2022.102761

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