It seems that a pair of Columbia U. students have analyzed the Iranian election results and found evidence of human-generated random numbers.
A study at MIT back in the 70s (OK, so it was a few students chatting in a hallway) determined that 17 is the most random number, 137 is also a highly random number, and that, in general, numbers consisting of odd digits and ending in 7 are random.
And what did this new analysis find? Yes, a disproportionate percentage of the vote counts ended in 7. In fact, 17% of the results ended in 7... which suggests meta-randomness. Further, only 4% of the counts ended in 5; it is well known that numbers ending in 5 are not random.
So, too many 7s and not enough 5s could be an indication that the numbers were chosen to look random rather than made up... as opposed to actually being random down at the last digit.


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