# 'Truncating' data - mathematically, what is this guy doing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2025, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251 "2025-03-28T11:35:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251/21 "2025-03-28T21:24:50Z")

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> [@Heracles](#):
>
> Could this person just be reformulating Benford’s law using strange tools?

Only if he goes on to talk about the statistics of large numbers, just choosing some arbitrary numbers, dividing them and looking at the mantissa is not making a useful point at all.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251/22 "2025-03-28T22:01:34Z")

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> [@brossa](#):
>
> 384,000/3474.1 = 110.5322417 but gets reported as 1.105

It almost looks like 384000 might have been truncated as text to 3840, then divided by 3474 - so as to treat them both as 4 digit numbers. Doesn’t make any sense, but it fits for the other examples you gave - it’s as though the placement of the decimal point for both numbers is dictated by its placement in the divisor.

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251/23 "2025-03-28T22:55:53Z")

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The OP has established that the guy spewing this nonsense is a mathematically illiterate numerologist.

Not much more to usefully say after that. The guy may as well assert that 5 = 15 for all the sense his blatherings make to actual non-wacky people.

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**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2025, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/truncating-data-mathematically-what-is-this-guy-doing/1016251/24 "2025-03-29T02:00:22Z")

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I didn’t burden you all with his ‘probability’ calculations, because they weren’t even wrong in the Paulian sense.

I hoped that there might be a nugget of truth to the normalization scheme, or a kernel of Benford’s Law in the leading digits, but it seems less likely than not.

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