Claudiu Herteliu

Breakdown of Benford's Law for Birth Data

Long birth time series for Romania are investigated from Benford’s law point of view, distinguishing between families with a religious (Orthodox and Non-Orthodox) affiliation. The data extend from Jan. 01, 1905 till Dec. 31, 2001, i.e. over 97 years or 35 429 days. The results point to a drastic breakdown of Benford’s law. Some interpretation is proposed, based on the statistical aspects due to population sizes, rather than on human thought constraints when the law breakdown is usually expected. Benford’s law breakdown clearly points to natural causes.

Hurst exponent of very long birth time series in XX century Romania. Social and religious aspects

The Hurst exponent of very long birth time series in Romania has been extracted from official daily records, i.e. over 97 years between 1905 and 2001 included. The series result from distinguishing between families located in urban (U) or rural (R) areas, and belonging (Ox) or not (NOx) to the orthodox religion. Four time series combining both criteria, (U,R) and (Ox, NOx), are also examined.

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

How much is the h-index of an editor of a well-ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his/her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h-index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well-ranked journal (impact factor, IF, greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h-index) within the journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is greater than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which the citations’ pattern has been studied is 1975–2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal’s benefit (an increase of its IF) has been indicated. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (editors’) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.

Deciphering the fluctuations of high frequency birth rates

Here the term “high frequency” refers to daily, weekly or monthly birth data. The fluctuations of daily birth numbers show a succession of spikes and dips which, at least at first sight, looks almost as random as white noise. However in recent times several studies were published, including by the present authors, which have given better insight into how birth is affected by exogenous factors. This paper demonstrates how it is possible to examine the adverse effects of catastrophes such as famines, diseases, earthquakes and heat waves on conceptions and link these to subsequent large anomalous troughs in the birth rate. Using both contemporary and historical data we also explore the changes over time which have taken place in birth rate troughs that arise from religious edicts within the Orthodox and Catholic populations in Romania and France respectively. These as well as other effects raise the hope that we will soon be able to “read” and interpret birth rate patterns in the same manner as for example Egyptologists may decipher hieroglyphs.

Intriguing behavior when testing the impact of quotation marks usage in Google search results

Internet research on search engine quality and validity of results demand much concern. Thus, the focus in our study has been to measure the impact of quotation marks usage on the internet search outputs in terms of Google search outcomes’ distributions, through Benford Law. The current paper is focused on applying a Benford Law analysis on two related types of internet searches distinguished by the usage or absence of quotation marks. Both search results values are assumed as variables. We found that the first digit of outcomes does not follow the Benford Law first digit of numbers in the case of searching text without quotation marks. Unexpectedly, the Benford Law is obeyed when quotation marks are used, even if the variability of search outcomes is considerably reduced. By studying outputs demonstrating influences of (apparently at first) “details”, in using a search engine, the authors are able to further warn the users concerning the validity of such outputs.

Decomposition of the Inequality of Income Distribution by Income Types—Application for Romania

This paper identifies the salient factors that characterize the inequality income distribution for Romania. Data analysis is rigorously carried out using sophisticated techniques borrowed from classical statistics (Theil). Decomposition of the inequalities measured by the Theil index is also performed. This study relies on an exhaustive (11.1 million records for 2014) data-set for total personal gross income of Romanian citizens.