Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWMPodcast
Episode 32: AfD Deaths Before Local Election – Coincidence or Conspiracy?
Shortly before the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, several AfD candidates died – mere coincidence or conspiracy?
Podcast »Streuspanne – Statistics and its Curiosities«
In this episode, Jochen Fiedler, Sascha Feth, and Esther Packullat take a statistical look at a story that made headlines and fueled speculation.
Join us on a journey through probabilities, modeling assumptions, and common statistical fallacies.
We’ll ask questions such as:
- How likely is such an event? And how can statistics help us evaluate it?
- Why does the way a question is framed matter so much in statistics?
- What do the board game Monopoly and a Monte Carlo simulation have to do with it?
- And why rare events aren’t actually that rare when you repeat something often enough.
Tune in now!
Note: We discuss these deaths solely from a statistical perspective. Our goal is not to judge or comment on any individual case.
We mention the following links, articles, and podcasts in this episode
- The Tagesschau article »Keine Unregelmäßigkeiten bei verstorbenen AfD-Kandidaten« (No Irregularities Found in the Deaths of AfD Candidates) [only available in German]
- The video by Christian Rieck »Four AfD candidates died before the election: Coincidence? (Probability using the Poisson distribution)«
It’s Worth Rewinding: Previous Episodes
- Episode 15: How Long Do We Live? And What Influences Life Expectancy?
- Episode 19: p-values – Not the Last Word in Wisdom
- Episode 3: Gewinnen Statistiker:innen häufiger im Glücksspiel? (Do Statisticians Win More Often at Gambling?)[only available in German]
- Episode 17: Misleading Intuition in Statistics – the Simpson Paradox
Help Shape Our Podcast!
Have you discovered a numerical phenomenon that you would like us to discuss? Or have you read a statistic in the media that you would like us to take a closer look at? Then get in touch with us at presse@itwm.fraunhofer.de!
Listen to the Podcast [Only in German]
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