Lasse Pröger

Mr. Lasse Pröger

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Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

6Years (2021-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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20 November 2021 in Stats
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Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
Lasse PrögerLasse Pröger
Lasse Pröger
PGPaul Griesberger
Paul Griesberger
KHKlaus Hackländer
Klaus Hackländer
NBNorbert Brunner
Norbert Brunner
MKManfred Kühleitner
Manfred Kühleitner
Benford’s law (BL) specifies the expected digit distributions of data in social sciences, such as demographic or financial data. We focused on the first-digit distribution and hypothesized that it would apply to data on locations of animals freely moving in a natural habitat. We believe that animal movement in natural habitats may differ with respect to BL from movement in more restricted areas (e.g., game preserve). To verify the BL-hypothesis for natural habitats, during 2015–2018, we collected telemetry data of twenty individuals of wild red deer from an alpine region of Austria. For each animal, we recorded the distances between successive position records. Collecting these data for each animal in weekly logbooks resulted in 1132 samples of size 65 on average. The weekly logbook data displayed a BL-like distribution of the leading digits. However, the data did not follow BL perfectly; for 9% (99) of the 1132 weekly logbooks, the chi-square test refuted the BL-hypothesis. A Monte Carlo simulation confirmed that this deviation from BL could not be explained by spurious tests, where a deviation from BL occurred by chance.