MASSIVE displays of popular anger on the streets of Iran 鈥� not to mention an outpouring of tweets and blogs 鈥� leave no doubt that many Iranians suspect they were cheated of a fair result in this month鈥檚 presidential election. While firm evidence is not easy to come by, this interconnected age makes wrong-doing impossible to hide completely. Statisticians around the world have been combing through the voting figures Iran has posted online, and then published their results on blogs and pre-print servers. While their 鈥渆lectoral forensics鈥� have laid to rest some knee-jerk criticisms of the results, they have also highlighted areas where the Iranian protesters seem to have cause for real concern (see 鈥淪tatistical analyses hint at fraud in Iranian election鈥�). There are lies, damn lies 鈥� and lies that the sophisticated use of statistics can lay bare.
No hiding place for electoral cheats
Hints of wrongdoing in the Iranian elections may be showing up in statistical analyses of the voting figures