Do pulsar and Fast Radio Burst dispersion measures obey Benford’s law?

Mamidipaka, Pragna and Desai, Shantanu (2023) Do pulsar and Fast Radio Burst dispersion measures obey Benford’s law? Astroparticle Physics, 144. pp. 1-4. ISSN 0927-6505

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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 χ2 close to 80 for 8 degrees of freedom for both these aforementioned datasets. This corresponds to a discrepancy of about 7σ. Therefore, we conclude that the dispersion measures of pulsars and FRBs do not obey Benford's law. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

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