text:
Talk:Matthias the Apostle

Untitled
These paragraphs were removed from the main article as they were not in the correct form for an he would become worthy. Jesus chooses all of us in the same way. What does Jesus want you to become?

 * In His Footsteps:

I found the original quote from Clement at www.ccel.org/fathers2/, and am going to put that text back in without commentary, and with the citation. Hope that's sufficiently NPOV. (And no, I didn't insert the original text quoted above, and fully agree with its removal.) Wesley -

In my tweaks and tightening, substituting another quote for paraphrase, etc, I've removed the following, which is factually incorrect:
 * According to Acts i:21 - 22), Matthias was one of the seventy disciples of Jesus, and had been with him from his baptism by John to the Ascension The author does subtly imply that the 120 gathered about had been with Jesus since his baptism in the River Jordan, which is stretching a point. Matthias is not individually singled out. Does this point, made to strengthen the authenticity of the newly-chosen apostle, need to be discussed in the article? --Wetman 20:11, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Restoring/removing interwiki
Of the Interwiki links made by a bot a few days ago, all that were in languages which I could make any sence out of (sv:, pl:, it:, fr:, nl:) pointed at S:t Matthew. I changed sv: and removed the rest (don't speak those languages). I also removed zh:, ko:, and ru:, assuming that they too, added by the same bot at the same time, were likely to be false. /Dcastor 02:16, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Codex Barroccianus
I can find no information about this whatsoever. Can anyone elaborate on attribution? User:michaelkvance

Colchis
Going along with the tradition that Matthias died in Colchis, I recently witnessed a grave marker for him placed in the Roman ruin at Gonio in Georgia (unfortunately the marker gave little information about the source(s) of this tradition). I added this information to the article. --68.162.157.62 17:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)JDWS

Image
Are you sure that this image represents Saint Matthias? The Greek caption says Ο Αγιος Ματθαίος -> Saint Mattheos = Matthew and not Matthias (Saint Matthias would be: Ο Αγιος Ματθίας). Slovene User:Marino —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.212.1.189 (talk) 10:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

You are right, the picture depicts Saint Matthew and not Saint Matthias--K kokkinos (talk) 07:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

 * I added an image representing Matthias, rather than Matthew. --Aaron Walden [[Image:Tsalagisigline.gif]] 10:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Anglican Commemoration date
This years Anglican Common Worship lectionary (ISBN 0-7151-2110-3) describes the commemoration of St Matthias on May 14th, not February 24th. I don't know enough to suggest when this changed or whether either date is 'traditional' Gw russell 20:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

 * There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Bartholomew the Apostle which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 18:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That discussion was closed as "no concensus after 14 days". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Fox's book of Martyrs
Fox's Book of Martyrs says that he was stone at Jerusalem and then beheaded. Here's the text: "Matthias Of whom less is known than of most of the other disciples, was elected to fill the vacant place of Judas. He was stoned at Jerusalem and then beheaded." Saksjn (talk) 22:18, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion below. GTBacchus(talk) 17:47, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Matthias the Apostle → Saint Matthias — The issues here are similar to a recent move of "Saint Matthew". This person is already the primary meaning of "Saint Matthias", and is the only Christian saint of this name. There is a "Saint Matthias (disambiguation)" page, but this mostly lists churches and the like, the only other person here is a religious con artist who sometimes used this name. Relisted for further input. Jafeluv (talk) 21:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

PatGallacher (talk) 15:50, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Comment the current naming clearly delineates this person from run of the mill saints, and seems that for all apostles, would be a good idea, since they existed before the formal sainting system was developed... 76.66.192.73 (talk) 05:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

 * "They existed before the formal sainting system was developed" is a historical and theological minefield, which, although it would be appropriate to discuss in the context of some articles, would be better not to get into for the purpose of deciding article names. PatGallacher (talk) 11:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

 * Support per UCN. Flamarande (talk) 21:03, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The previous move was made with the note that 'Saint' violates wikipedia's policy on honorifics. (A note that that has not been addressed in this discussion.) --RegentsPark (talk) 18:43, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I quote the naming conventions for clergy at WP:NCWC: "Saints go by their most common English name, minus the 'Saint', unless they are only recognisable by its inclusion. For example, Paul of Tarsus, Ulrich of Augsburg but Saint Patrick." So I suggest this doesn't violate any policy, it is allowable. PatGallacher (talk) 14:37, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

 * Support because Matthias was not one of the original Apostles (he was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot by the other 11 Apostles), so Saint Matthias seems a better description. Other saints, such as Saint Dismas, use saint in their title where the name is not adequate by itself. An alternative would be a move to Matthias, which at the moment is a dab page. Cjc13 (talk) 13:37, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Something peculiar seems to have happened here. It looks as the discussed move was never actually made? Anyway, moved now. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, or alternatively I've probably just misread the discussion above. Ooops. Someone will probably reverse it. Well anyway, it's hardly an NPOV naming. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

St Matthias' Day
I have just put in a little information about St. Matthias' Day. Does any one think it might deserve its own article? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:59, 29 december 2000 (UTC)

 * I've tagged your recent insertion as needing a reference to prove it is legitimate info. Please supply that link before someone deletes it as your original research.
 * As far as deserving its own article, that would be up for you to decide. If you have enough material (and references to back up that info), anything is deserving. Ckruschke (talk) 17:55, 28 February 2012 (UTC)Ckruschke

Thank you for the response. The source of my information was a book I read a long time ago called "Everybody's Birthday Book" which had about the days of the year and the special features of them. It was a long time ago when I read it, so I can see whether I can find some more recent sources! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Where is Aethiopia?
"in Aethiopia (by the region of Colchis, now in modern-day Georgia)" and note a ? or Ethiopia where the link takes us to? --2607:FEA8:D5DF:1AF0:87C:8827:9DDC:6168 (talk) 21:21, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

 * It seems clear from the rest of the context that Matthias would have been working near the Black Sea and not in Africa. Probably there needs to be a disambiguation page about the two Aethiopias, and a new page called something like Aethiopia (Colchis) or Aethiopia (Caucasus). I need to figure out how to create a disambiguation page. I've added a link to the text of the 19th century article on the "Egyptian military colony" cited in note 'a' and reference 5.

 * According to the Aethiopia entry, the Greek form of the place name, transliterated Aithiopia, appears in the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod, and Herodotus. Herodotus equates it with the African kingdom centered in Meroë, see Kingdom of Kush, in what later became known Nubia. The Tanakh Hebrew biblical texts use an apparently phonetically related term to Kush, see Cush (Bible), and according to the Aethiopia entry, when the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew biblical texts was made in the third century BCE, Kush/Cush was rendered as Aethiopia. Possibly there is an elision here of transition from Aithiopia to Aethiopia with the translation of the Septuagint into Latin for the Roman church's Latin Vulgate bible, which in turn shaped the King James Version English bible translation.

 * Aithiopia/Kush/Nubia was closely connected to Egypt from the New Kingdom period onward, with periods when Egypt ruled it, while in the 25th Dynasty Egypt was conquered and ruled by Kushite pharoahs. The connection continued in the Ptolomaic Hellenistic period and under Roman rule.

 * Herodotus among other things reported that the people who lived in Colchis were connected to Egypt and Aithiopia and that his contemporaries (5th century BCE) in both places recognized the connection. As the article by English philologist Hyde Clarke from 1874 cited in reference 5 shows, Herodotus was also the source of the idea of an Egyption military colony in Colchis. Herodotus believed that an Egyptian pharaoh whom he called Sesostris had conducted warfare as far north as the Caucasus, and across Asia Minor and into a small part of Europe. Today many scholars identify the name Sesostris with the Middle Kingdom ruler Senusret III (1878-1839 BCE) while a smaller identify it with New Kingdom ruler Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE). And it has also been known since the early or mid-19th century that the furthest north any ancient Egyptian ruler conducted warfare was the Levant. So a literal colony of Egyptian soldiers left behind in Colchis as the source of the name Aethiopia at the time of Matthias' evangelism is impossible. Hyde Clarke acknowledges this, so his article doesn't support the Egyptian military camp theory. He was nonetheless interested in possible philological connections between the language of Colchis and ancient Egyptian, an idea that modern linguistics would not support.

 * On the other hand, Hyde's article does support the idea that educated people in the early Christian era knew of the purported relationship between Egypt/Nubia/Aethiopia in Africa, and Colchis. Such awareness might explain how the rural people away from the cities in Colchis mentioned in the later-collected and later-surviving reports of Mattias' activities and possible death there came to be referred to as Aethiopians. Colchis was remote from Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch -- the great Roman cities in the early Empire -- and one of the furthest ends of the Roman realm to the northeast, as reflected in the phrase "from the Pillars of Hercules to Colchis." It was also in a way a northern mirror of Aethiopia to the south of Egypt -- what lay beyond was largely a mystery. Its realities were unlikely to be well-known in more central places. Conversely, Herodotus was well-known, and his work was held in prestige. So if a story came that Matthias had been killed in Colchis, someone looking for a way to say what that meant might well have looked to Herodotus' characterization of the connection to Aethiopia.

I will try make time to edit the article to bring this conclusion into the notes/references in an appropriately encyclopedic way.

Requested move 13 April 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved   Calidum  18:54, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Saint Matthias → Matthias the Apostle – For consistency with highly related Christian religious figure articles, including: Andrew the Apostle, Bartholomew the Apostle, John the Apostle, Jude the Apostle, Matthew the Apostle, Paul the Apostle, Philip the Apostle and Thomas the Apostle, and per the clergy guideline WP:NCWC that dissuades from the use of 'Saint' unless it is the only option for disambiguation. ~ Iskandar323 (talk) 17:49, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

 * Support Don't see why not. Happy Editing-- IAm Chaos  19:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

 * Support per WP:NPOV and WP:RS. Current title indefensible. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Acts of Apostles Authored Date
63 AD is too early. It should 80-100 As stated in the link to the topic. Either that or there is something confusing about that sentence I'm not getting. 2601:602:781:6250:D9C7:F40A:E647:1726 (talk) 03:25, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Matthias the Apostle


text:
Talk:Ilona Staller

Untitled
The Porn FAQ at http://www.iafd.com/person.asp?perfid=Cicciolina&gender=F gives her birth date as Wednesday, December 26, 1951 contradicting the information in the article. http://search.excaliburfilms.com/pornlist/starpgs/ciccioli.htm gives December 12.AxelBoldt

So Cicciolina is not dead after all! — J I P | Talk 5 July 2005 19:20 (UTC)

category question
She was born in Hungary but became a porn star (and much more) in Italy. Should she be considered (for category purposes) a Hungarian porn star or an Italian porn star? -EdgarAllanToe 14:27, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

honourable
As a former member of the Italian Parliament, she is styled 'Honourable Anna Ilona Staller'. Please do not remove the correct manner of address. 81.208.83.215 13:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Can you back up your statement with a reliable source? Tabercil 23:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Italian dictionary (http://www.dizionario-italiano.it/dizionario-italiano.php?lemma=onorevole) or just google "onorevoli deputati" for tens of thousands of results (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22onorevoli+deputati%22&btnG=Search&meta=) 81.208.83.215 10:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The title "Onorevole" (Honourable) is applied only to the actual members of the Parliament, not to the former members.Check the Italian version of the page where there's no "Honourable" applied to the name 84.222.95.52 22:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Title
This article should be renamed according to Wikipedia's policy to "Cicciolina", as this is Ilona Staller's stage name —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.226.217.121 (talk) 10:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * "Cicciolina redirects here, so it's not a big isssue. [20:50, 31 August 2009 (UTC)]

What the hell is "limited scat?"
And is it a technical term? I'm completely confused. 4.248.47.106 (talk) 18:48, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Italian Stallion
This statement about rumors of Cicciolina fellating an Italian Stallion are a text book example of Wikipedia's policy of rumors about public figures. To wit:

In the case of significant public figures, there will be a multitude of reliable, third-party published sources to take material from, and Wikipedia biographies should simply document what these sources say. If an allegation or incident is notable, relevant, and well-documented by reliable published sources, it belongs in the article.

Example A politician is alleged to have had an affair. He denies it, but the New York Times publishes the allegations, and there is a public scandal. The allegation may belong in the biography, citing the New York Times as the source.

The two articles cited refute the rumor nearly 20 years after it appeared, so it's not appropriate to include them in the text (According to the Belfast Telegraph...) but the rumor persists and looms large in the subjects notoriety. Plus, there's basis to the rumor: the zoophilia with a horse did go down in a film she starred in, except by a different ... uhh... actress. 20:59, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

 * You cannot stuff a BLP article full of rumors, dubious claims, and contentious material by citing it to IMDB, a moribund gossip site like http://www.inoutstar.com, or any other sites that don't meet the requirements of WP:BLP and WP:RS. However impressively named some of those sites might be to you, there is virtually no reliably sourced material of an encyclopedic nature in the text you insist should be restored to the article, and certainly not in the wholly unnecessary attempt to determine which porn performer may have had sex with a horse decades ago. This is just the sort of "titillating claim" that WP:BLP clearly states is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article.Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk)

 * Both the Belfast Telegraph and the Independent newspapers saw fit to acknowledge the rumors of her zoophilia. It's a significant pervasive rumor, the second thing some people associate with her, much like prurient rumors of Catherine the Great's zoophilia, which gets a whole lengthy article.  Either the rumors or true or they're not.  http://www.inoutstar.com was the best source I found, unless you can read Italian, that refutes this rumor authoritatively by displacing it with specific information.

 * imDb is a reliable source 99% of the time. It's useful in clarifying the LA Times article that her trademark is baring one breast. 20:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * BLP applies to any living person mentioned in a Wikipedia article, not just to the article subject. The article you cite on Catherine the Great does not refer to any living person, not does it devote more than a single line to the rumor. IMDB is not, by consensus, a reliable source for BLP details, especially controversial or derogatory ones.. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 22:34, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

 * IMDb's note that her trademark is a dress that exposes one breast is not more controversial or derogatory than the LA Time's article about how she conducted a "breast-baring campaign", merely more specific. The article on Catherine the Great's zoophilia is quite lengthy. Rumors of Cicciolina's zoophilia are stated and refuted in a single, one-line sentence. This version of the article has many other improvements that should not be discarded.  02:29, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Her first appearence in a Playboy issue was in Italian Playboy, June 1980. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.91.36.14 (talk) 22:25, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Decription at the intro
The article begins by describing Cicciolina as an "Italian politician, porn-star, and singer". In terms of notability, the order needs to be changed : She is most notable for having being a pornographic model and film performer, first and foremost, then for her brief stint in Italian politics and then as a (novelty) singer. Also, the sentence "She is famous for delivering political speeches with one breast exposed", needs to be moved from the introduction to the section about her political career.-The Gnome (talk) 19:34, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Onorevole Cicciolina going to retire
Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar: One of the most famous porn star Ilona Staller 26th November 2011th will have a 60th years. Being on the list of the Radical Party Marco Panella since 1987 until 1992 the Deputies of the Parliament of Italy, acquired the requirements to recieve a state pension of 3,000 euros a month. Happy days a well-deserved retirement, Onorevole Cicciolina. 78.2.84.129 (talk) 20:57, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Cicciolina go to the Vatican
Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar: A former secret agent, porn actress and politician Ilona Staller Cicciolina be spiritualy transformed. She is now retired, lives in Rome and go every Sunday to Mass at the Vatican.78.2.47.187 (talk) 02:36, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Ilona Staller. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20141006070733/http://u.tv/News/Not-just-the-king-of-kitsch/57aca175-4791-43dc-a925-104cdd01fd7b to http://u.tv/News/Not-just-the-king-of-kitsch/57aca175-4791-43dc-a925-104cdd01fd7b

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Radio Show on Radio Luna and actress carreer
The radio show on Radio Luna called Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? she started in 1976, not in 1973: in that year the ratio station don't existed yet, indeed it started in 1976 following the italian "free radio" fenomena, when a lot of local and indipendent radio stations started in the late 1970's. -- Il Passeggero -  I love to love you   07:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by IlPasseggero (talk • contribs)

 * The first movie she played wasn't La liceale, but Incontro d'amore, 5 years before. See IMDB. -- Il Passeggero -  I love to love you   07:13, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 18 October 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline (talk) 14:16, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Ilona Staller → Cicciolina – This is per WP:COMMONNAME. Even the article itself says in the first sentence that she is better known as Cicciolina. Google News Search, for example, returns 12,800 results for "Cicciolina" and 2,800 for "Ilona Staller".  Vanjagenije  (talk)  22:50, 18 October 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. sst✈ 09:25, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose in more serious sources known by real name. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

In popular culture - italian band Bulldozer made two songs about her
"Ilona the Very Best" on Bulldozer's album "IX" (1987) "Ilona has been elected" on Bulldozer's album "Neurodeliri" (1988) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.139.13.205 (talk) 08:49, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Cicciolina DOES NOT mean "little chubby"
Chi ha tradotto "cicciolino" con "little chubby" si è probabilmente confuso con "cicciottino". In italiano, il termine "cicciolino", così come il suo corrispondente femminile "cicciolina", viene usato come termine affettuoso, praticamente analogo a "ciccino", e molto simile a "tesoruccio", "amoruccio" ecc., e non ha nulla a che vedere con la grassezza, tanto è vero che anche il mio nipotino, che è decisamente magro, viene da me chiamato "cicciolino", in alternanza con "tesoruccio" e altri termini simili. Se uno volesse dire "little chubby", direbbe "cicciottino" ("tt" al posto di "l"), che appunto fa riferimento alla grassezza, anche se in forma attenuata e in un certo senso vezzeggiativa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.32.65.198 (talk) 22:41, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

 * Cool story, bro. 82.83.214.218 (talk) 04:25, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Name
The Italian WP has her as "Ilona Staller, all'anagrafe Elena Anna Staller, nota anche con lo pseudonimo di Cicciolina" but does not give pronunciations. It might be useful to add pronunciations for Staller and Cicciolina.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 11:05, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Ilona Staller


text:
GEGL

The Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) is a programming library under development for image processing applications. It is mainly developed for GIMP in order to add support for higher bit depth images, and non-destructive editing. It was partially implemented in GIMP 2.6, with more added in 2.8, and is now a central part in 2.10. Many Filters are ready, but also much work in progress. Target is full support of all important filters in roadmap in Version 3.0. It is also used by GNOME's Photos and gedl.

Design
GEGL is modelled after a directed acyclic graph, where each node represents an image operation (called "operators" or "ops"), and each edge represents an image. Operations can in general take several input images and give several output images, which corresponds to having several incoming edges (images) and several outgoing edges (images) at a given node (operation). The system uses an on-demand model, doing work only as required. This allows features such as having very quick previews while editing, and once the user has finished making changes, GEGL will repeat the same operations in full resolution for the final image in the background.

Operations
An operation (op) is a node within a GEGL graph responsible for one action; ops can be:
 * simple, such as "add" (taking two inputs) or "premultiply by alpha" (taking one input)
 * complex, such as colorspace conversions

GEGL also has a notion of meta operations, where one operation can be constructed from other operations (e.g. unsharp mask is a combination of add, multiply, subtract and gaussian blur ops).

babl
babl, a support library for GEGL, provides a generic way to deal with color-space conversions; babl operates abstracting the fundamental color operations so that GEGL need not be aware of them. Through babl, GEGL provides an optimized and powerful (optionally with SIMD support) treatment of arbitrary color data; this enables dependent applications to efficiently support a wide range of color spaces (from 8-bit RGB to full floating point CMYK) with minimal extra application code.

OpenRaster
OpenRaster is an XML file format used for saving raster graphics. GEGL's lead developer Øyvind Kolås has helped specifying OpenRaster so that it is capable of saving a GEGL graph.

History

GEGL was originally conceived as a GIMP core replacement in 2000 by Rhythm & Hues software engineers, finally in 2006 the external API was deemed stable enough and capable of replacing the GIMP core. On 20 December 2007, it was added to the development version of GIMP. Some of GIMP's tools have already been converted to GEGL operations; mostly tools which modify colors, brightness or contrast have been converted.

Version 0.2.0 is Part of Gimp 2.8.xy and Series 0.3.xy is Part of 2.9.x and in 2.10.0 Release Candidates. 0.4.0 is first Version for Version 2.10.0 of Gimp. Actual Version 0.4.xy is also base of development Version 2.99.x for stable 3.0 series of Gimp. 0.5 (or higher like 1.0) will be the line of 3.0 stable series.

As of unstable 2.9.x series, all of GIMP's core relies on GEGL, and almost half of filters have been replaced with GEGL operations. Target is 100% of canvas filters in GEGL in 2.10 and later.

Historically, the GEGL mascot, a five-legged goat created by Jiří Lebl, found life as an easter egg in GNOME desktops.

OpenCL
Some of GEGL's operations are available in OpenCL-based hardware-accelerated version. A 3rd party effort, called GEGL-OpenCL, of converting more operations to OpenCL was started by Stream HPC in 2016. The project was stagnant starting May 2017, but was revived in the summer of 2019.

title: GEGL


text:
Benford's law

Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small. In sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. Uniformly distributed digits would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford's law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.

The graph to the right shows Benford's law for base 10, one of infinitely many cases of a generalized law regarding numbers expressed in arbitrary (integer) bases, which rules out the possibility that the phenomenon might be an artifact of the base-10 number system. Further generalizations published in 1995 included analogous statements for both the nth leading digit and the joint distribution of the leading n digits, the latter of which leads to a corollary wherein the significant digits are shown to be a statistically dependent quantity.

It has been shown that this result applies to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, house prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, and physical and mathematical constants. Like other general principles about natural data—for example, the fact that many data sets are well approximated by a normal distribution—there are illustrative examples and explanations that cover many of the cases where Benford's law applies, though there are many other cases where Benford's law applies that resist simple explanations. Benford's Law tends to be most accurate when values are distributed across multiple orders of magnitude, especially if the process generating the numbers is described by a power law (which is common in nature).

The law is named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938 in an article titled "The Law of Anomalous Numbers", although it had been previously stated by Simon Newcomb in 1881.

The law is similar in concept, though not identical in distribution, to Zipf's law.

Definition
A set of numbers is said to satisfy Benford's law if the leading digit $d$ ($d ∈ \{1, ..., 9\}$) occurs with probability
 * $$P(d) = \log_{10}(d + 1) - \log_{10}(d) = \log_{10}\left(\frac{d + 1}{d}\right) = \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{d}\right).$$

The leading digits in such a set thus have the following distribution: The quantity $d$ is proportional to the space between $P(d)$ and $d + 1$ on a logarithmic scale. Therefore, this is the distribution expected if the logarithms of the numbers (but not the numbers themselves) are uniformly and randomly distributed.

For example, a number $P(d)$, constrained to lie between 1 and 10, starts with the digit 1 if $1 ≤ x < 2$, and starts with the digit 9 if $9 ≤ x < 10$. Therefore, $P(d)$ starts with the digit 1 if $log 1 ≤ log x < log 2$, or starts with 9 if $log 9 ≤ log x < log 10$. The interval $[log 1, log 2]$ is much wider than the interval $[log 9, log 10]$ (0.30 and 0.05 respectively); therefore if log $d$ is uniformly and randomly distributed, it is much more likely to fall into the wider interval than the narrower interval, i.e. more likely to start with 1 than with 9; the probabilities are proportional to the interval widths, giving the equation above (as well as the generalization to other bases besides decimal).

Benford's law is sometimes stated in a stronger form, asserting that the fractional part of the logarithm of data is typically close to uniformly distributed between 0 and 1; from this, the main claim about the distribution of first digits can be derived.

In other bases
An extension of Benford's law predicts the distribution of first digits in other bases besides decimal; in fact, any base $b ≥ 2$. The general form is
 * $$P(d) = \log_b(d + 1) - \log_b(d) = \log_b\left(1 + \frac{1}{d}\right).$$

For $b = 2, 1$ (the binary and unary) number systems, Benford's law is true but trivial: All binary and unary numbers (except for 0 or the empty set) start with the digit 1. (On the other hand, the generalization of Benford's law to second and later digits is not trivial, even for binary numbers. )

Examples
Examining a list of the heights of the 58 tallest structures in the world by category shows that 1 is by far the most common leading digit, irrespective of the unit of measurement (see "scale invariance" below):

Another example is the leading digit of $2^{n}$. The sequence of the first 96 leading digits (1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 3, 6, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 3, 6, 1, ... ) exhibits closer adherence to Benford’s law than is expected for random sequences of the same length, because it is derived from a geometric sequence.

History
The discovery of Benford's law goes back to 1881, when the Canadian-American astronomer Simon Newcomb noticed that in logarithm tables the earlier pages (that started with 1) were much more worn than the other pages. Newcomb's published result is the first known instance of this observation and includes a distribution on the second digit as well. Newcomb proposed a law that the probability of a single number N being the first digit of a number was equal to log(N + 1) − log(N).

The phenomenon was again noted in 1938 by the physicist Frank Benford, who tested it on data from 20 different domains and was credited for it. His data set included the surface areas of 335 rivers, the sizes of 3259 US populations, 104 physical constants, 1800 molecular weights, 5000 entries from a mathematical handbook, 308 numbers contained in an issue of Reader's Digest, the street addresses of the first 342 persons listed in American Men of Science and 418 death rates. The total number of observations used in the paper was 20,229. This discovery was later named after Benford (making it an example of Stigler's law).

In 1995, Ted Hill proved the result about mixed distributions mentioned below.

Explanations
Benford's law tends to apply most accurately to data that span several orders of magnitude. As a rule of thumb, the more orders of magnitude that the data evenly covers, the more accurately Benford's law applies. For instance, one can expect that Benford's law would apply to a list of numbers representing the populations of UK settlements. But if a "settlement" is defined as a village with population between 300 and 999, then Benford's law will not apply.

Consider the probability distributions shown below, referenced to a log scale. In each case, the total area in red is the relative probability that the first digit is 1, and the total area in blue is the relative probability that the first digit is 8. For the first distribution, the size of the areas of red and blue are approximately proportional to the widths of each red and blue bar. Therefore, the numbers drawn from this distribution will approximately follow Benford's law. On the other hand, for the second distribution, the ratio of the areas of red and blue is very different from the ratio of the widths of each red and blue bar. Rather, the relative areas of red and blue are determined more by the heights of the bars than the widths. Accordingly, the first digits in this distribution do not satisfy Benford's law at all.

Thus, real-world distributions that span several orders of magnitude rather uniformly (e.g., stock-market prices and populations of villages, towns, and cities) are likely to satisfy Benford's law very accurately. On the other hand, a distribution mostly or entirely within one order of magnitude (e.g., IQ scores or heights of human adults) is unlikely to satisfy Benford's law very accurately, if at all. However, the difference between applicable and inapplicable regimes is not a sharp cut-off: as the distribution gets narrower, the deviations from Benford's law increase gradually.

(This discussion is not a full explanation of Benford's law, because it has not explained why data sets are so often encountered that, when plotted as a probability distribution of the logarithm of the variable, are relatively uniform over several orders of magnitude. )

Krieger–Kafri entropy explanation
In 1970 Wolfgang Krieger proved what is now called the Krieger generator theorem. The Krieger generator theorem might be viewed as a justification for the assumption in the Kafri ball-and-box model that, in a given base $$B$$ with a fixed number of digits 0, 1, ..., n, ..., $$B - 1$$, digit n is equivalent to a Kafri box containing n non-interacting balls. Other scientists and statisticians have suggested entropy-related explanations for Benford's law.

Multiplicative fluctuations
Many real-world examples of Benford's law arise from multiplicative fluctuations. For example, if a stock price starts at $100, and then each day it gets multiplied by a randomly chosen factor between 0.99 and 1.01, then over an extended period the probability distribution of its price satisfies Benford's law with higher and higher accuracy.

The reason is that the logarithm of the stock price is undergoing a random walk, so over time its probability distribution will get more and more broad and smooth (see above). (More technically, the central limit theorem says that multiplying more and more random variables will create a log-normal distribution with larger and larger variance, so eventually it covers many orders of magnitude almost uniformly.) To be sure of approximate agreement with Benford's law, the distribution has to be approximately invariant when scaled up by any factor up to 10; a log-normally distributed data set with wide dispersion would have this approximate property.

Unlike multiplicative fluctuations, additive fluctuations do not lead to Benford's law: They lead instead to normal probability distributions (again by the central limit theorem), which do not satisfy Benford's law. By contrast, that hypothetical stock price described above can be written as the product of many random variables (i.e. the price change factor for each day), so is likely to follow Benford's law quite well.

Multiple probability distributions
Anton Formann provided an alternative explanation by directing attention to the interrelation between the distribution of the significant digits and the distribution of the observed variable. He showed in a simulation study that long-right-tailed distributions of a random variable are compatible with the Newcomb–Benford law, and that for distributions of the ratio of two random variables the fit generally improves. For numbers drawn from certain distributions (IQ scores, human heights) the Benford's law fails to hold because these variates obey a normal distribution, which is known not to satisfy Benford's law, since normal distributions can't span several orders of magnitude and the Significand of their logarithms will not be (even approximately) uniformly distributed. However, if one "mixes" numbers from those distributions, for example, by taking numbers from newspaper articles, Benford's law reappears. This can also be proven mathematically: if one repeatedly "randomly" chooses a probability distribution (from an uncorrelated set) and then randomly chooses a number according to that distribution, the resulting list of numbers will obey Benford's law. A similar probabilistic explanation for the appearance of Benford's law in everyday-life numbers has been advanced by showing that it arises naturally when one considers mixtures of uniform distributions.

Invariance
In a list of lengths, the distribution of first digits of numbers in the list may be generally similar regardless of whether all the lengths are expressed in metres, yards, feet, inches, etc. The same applies to monetary units.

This is not always the case. For example, the height of adult humans almost always starts with a 1 or 2 when measured in metres and almost always starts with 4, 5, 6, or 7 when measured in feet. But in a list of lengths spread evenly over many orders of magnitude—for example, a list of 1000 lengths mentioned in scientific papers that includes the measurements of molecules, bacteria, plants, and galaxies—it is reasonable to expect the distribution of first digits to be the same no matter whether the lengths are written in metres or in feet.

When the distribution of the first digits of a data set is scale-invariant (independent of the units that the data are expressed in), it is always given by Benford's law.

For example, the first (non-zero) digit on the aforementioned list of lengths should have the same distribution whether the unit of measurement is feet or yards. But there are three feet in a yard, so the probability that the first digit of a length in yards is 1 must be the same as the probability that the first digit of a length in feet is 3, 4, or 5; similarly, the probability that the first digit of a length in yards is 2 must be the same as the probability that the first digit of a length in feet is 6, 7, or 8. Applying this to all possible measurement scales gives the logarithmic distribution of Benford's law.

Benford's law for first digits is base invariant for number systems. There are conditions and proofs of sum invariance, inverse invariance, and addition and subtraction invariance.

Accounting fraud detection
In 1972, Hal Varian suggested that the law could be used to detect possible fraud in lists of socio-economic data submitted in support of public planning decisions. Based on the plausible assumption that people who fabricate figures tend to distribute their digits fairly uniformly, a simple comparison of first-digit frequency distribution from the data with the expected distribution according to Benford's law ought to show up any anomalous results.

Use in criminal trials
In the United States, evidence based on Benford's law has been admitted in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.

Election data
Walter Mebane, a political scientist and statistician at the University of Michigan, was the first to apply the second-digit Benford's law-test (2BL-test) in election forensics. Such analysis is considered a simple, though not foolproof, method of identifying irregularities in election results. Scientific consensus to support the applicability of Benford's law to elections has not been reached in the literature. A 2011 study by the political scientists Joseph Deckert, Mikhail Myagkov, and Peter C. Ordeshook argued that Benford's law is problematic and misleading as a statistical indicator of election fraud. Their method was criticized by Mebane in a response, though he agreed that there are many caveats to the application of Benford's law to election data.

Benford's law has been used as evidence of fraud in the 2009 Iranian elections. An analysis by Mebane found that the second digits in vote counts for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the winner of the election, tended to differ significantly from the expectations of Benford's law, and that the ballot boxes with very few invalid ballots had a greater influence on the results, suggesting widespread ballot stuffing. Another study used bootstrap simulations to find that the candidate Mehdi Karroubi received almost twice as many vote counts beginning with the digit 7 as would be expected according to Benford's law, while an analysis from Columbia University concluded that the probability that a fair election would produce both too few non-adjacent digits and the suspicious deviations in last-digit frequencies as found in the 2009 Iranian presidential election is less than 0.5 percent. Benford's law has also been applied for forensic auditing and fraud detection on data from the 2003 California gubernatorial election, the 2000 and 2004 United States presidential elections, and the 2009 German federal election; the Benford's Law Test was found to be "worth taking seriously as a statistical test for fraud," although "is not sensitive to distortions we know significantly affected many votes."

Benford's law has also been misapplied to claim election fraud. When applying the law to Joe Biden's election returns for Chicago, Milwaukee, and other localities in the 2020 United States presidential election, the distribution of the first digit did not follow Benford's law. The misapplication was a result of looking at data that was tightly bound in range, which violates the assumption inherent in Benford's law that the range of the data be large. The first digit test was applied to precinct-level data, but because precincts rarely receive more than a few thousand votes or fewer than several dozen, Benford's law cannot be expected to apply. According to Mebane, "It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds."

Macroeconomic data
Similarly, the macroeconomic data the Greek government reported to the European Union before entering the eurozone was shown to be probably fraudulent using Benford's law, albeit years after the country joined.

Price digit analysis
Researchers have used Benford's law to detect psychological pricing patterns, in a Europe-wide study in consumer product prices before and after euro was introduced in 2002. The idea was that, without psychological pricing, the first two or three digits of price of items should follow Benford's law. Consequently, if the distribution of digits deviates from Benford's law (such as having a lot of 9's), it means merchants may have used psychological pricing.

When the euro replaced local currencies in 2002, for a brief period of time, the price of goods in euro was simply converted from the price of goods in local currencies before the replacement. As it is essentially impossible to use psychological pricing simultaneously on both price-in-euro and price-in-local-currency, during the transition period, psychological pricing would be disrupted even if it used to be present. It can only be re-established once consumers have gotten used to prices in a single currency again, this time in euro.

As the researchers expected, the distribution of first price digit followed Benford's law, but the distribution of the second and third digits deviated significantly from Benford's law before the introduction, then deviated less during the introduction, then deviated more again after the introduction.

Genome data
The number of open reading frames and their relationship to genome size differs between eukaryotes and prokaryotes with the former showing a log-linear relationship and the latter a linear relationship. Benford's law has been used to test this observation with an excellent fit to the data in both cases.

Scientific fraud detection
A test of regression coefficients in published papers showed agreement with Benford's law. As a comparison group subjects were asked to fabricate statistical estimates. The fabricated results conformed to Benford's law on first digits, but failed to obey Benford's law on second digits.

Statistical tests
Although the chi-squared test has been used to test for compliance with Benford's law it has low statistical power when used with small samples.

The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and the Kuiper test are more powerful when the sample size is small, particularly when Stephens's corrective factor is used. These tests may be unduly conservative when applied to discrete distributions. Values for the Benford test have been generated by Morrow. The critical values of the test statistics are shown below:

 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! ! 0.10 ! 0.05 ! 0.01
 * Kuiper
 * 1.191
 * 1.321
 * 1.579
 * Kolmogorov–Smirnov
 * 1.012
 * 1.148
 * 1.420
 * }
 * 1.420
 * }

These critical values provide the minimum test statistic values required to reject the hypothesis of compliance with Benford's law at the given significance levels.

Two alternative tests specific to this law have been published: First, the max ($x$) statistic is given by

 * $$m = \sqrt{N} \cdot \max_{k=1}^9 \left\{\left|\Pr\left(X \text{ has FSD} = k\right) - \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{k}\right)\right|\right\}.$$

The leading factor $$\sqrt{N}$$ does not appear in the original formula by Leemis; it was added by Morrow in a later paper.

Secondly, the distance ($x$) statistic is given by

 * $$d = \sqrt{N \cdot \sum_{l=1}^9 \left[\Pr\left(X \text{ has FSD} = l\right) - \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{l}\right)\right]^2},$$

where FSD is the first significant digit and $x$ is the sample size. Morrow has determined the critical values for both these statistics, which are shown below:

 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! ! 0.10 ! 0.05 ! 0.01
 * Leemis's $⍺$
 * 0.851
 * 0.967
 * 1.212
 * Cho & Gaines's $m$
 * 1.212
 * 1.330
 * 1.569
 * }
 * 1.569
 * }

Morrow has also shown that for any random variable $d$  (with a continuous PDF) divided by its standard deviation ($N$), some value  $⍺$  can be found so that the probability of the distribution of the first significant digit of the random variable $$|X/\sigma|^A$$ will differ from Benford's law by less than $m$ > 0. The value of $d$ depends on the value of $X$ and the distribution of the random variable.

A method of accounting fraud detection based on bootstrapping and regression has been proposed.

If the goal is to conclude agreement with the Benford's law rather than disagreement, then the goodness-of-fit tests mentioned above are inappropriate. In this case the specific tests for equivalence should be applied. An empirical distribution is called equivalent to the Benford's law if a distance (for example total variation distance or the usual Euclidean distance) between the probability mass functions is sufficiently small. This method of testing with application to Benford's law is described in Ostrovski.

Distributions known to obey Benford's law
Some well-known infinite integer sequences provably satisfy Benford's law exactly (in the asymptotic limit as more and more terms of the sequence are included). Among these are the Fibonacci numbers, the factorials, the powers of 2,  and the powers of almost any other number.

Likewise, some continuous processes satisfy Benford's law exactly (in the asymptotic limit as the process continues through time). One is an exponential growth or decay process: If a quantity is exponentially increasing or decreasing in time, then the percentage of time that it has each first digit satisfies Benford's law asymptotically (i.e. increasing accuracy as the process continues through time).

Distributions known to disobey Benford's law
The square roots and reciprocals of successive natural numbers do not obey this law. Prime numbers in a finite range follow a Generalized Benford’s law, that approaches uniformity as the size of the range approaches infinity. Lists of local telephone numbers violate Benford's law. Benford's law is violated by the populations of all places with a population of at least 2500 individuals from five US states according to the 1960 and 1970 censuses, where only 19 % began with digit 1 but 20 % began with digit 2, because truncation at 2500 introduces statistical bias. The terminal digits in pathology reports violate Benford's law due to rounding.

Distributions that do not span several orders of magnitude will not follow Benford's law. Examples include height, weight, and IQ scores.

Criteria for distributions expected and not expected to obey Benford's law
A number of criteria, applicable particularly to accounting data, have been suggested where Benford's law can be expected to apply.

 * Distributions that can be expected to obey Benford's law
 * When the mean is greater than the median and the skew is positive
 * Numbers that result from mathematical combination of numbers: e.g. quantity × price
 * Transaction level data: e.g. disbursements, sales

 * Distributions that would not be expected to obey Benford's law
 * Where numbers are assigned sequentially: e.g. check numbers, invoice numbers
 * Where numbers are influenced by human thought: e.g. prices set by psychological thresholds ($9.99)
 * Accounts with a large number of firm-specific numbers: e.g. accounts set up to record $100 refunds
 * Accounts with a built-in minimum or maximum
 * Distributions that do not span an order of magnitude of numbers.

Benford’s law compliance theorem
Mathematically, Benford’s law applies if the distribution being tested fits the "Benford’s law compliance theorem". The derivation says that Benford's law is followed if the Fourier transform of the logarithm of the probability density function is zero for all integer values. Most notably, this is satisfied if the Fourier transform is zero (or negligible) for n ≥ 1. This is satisfied if the distribution is wide (since wide distribution implies a narrow Fourier transform). Smith summarizes thus (p. 716): Benford's law is followed by distributions that are wide compared with unit distance along the logarithmic scale. Likewise, the law is not followed by distributions that are narrow compared with unit distance … If the distribution is wide compared with unit distance on the log axis, it means that the spread in the set of numbers being examined is much greater than ten.

In short, Benford’s law requires that the numbers in the distribution being measured have a spread across at least an order of magnitude.

Tests with common distributions
Benford's law was empirically tested against the numbers (up to the 10th digit) generated by a number of important distributions, including the uniform distribution, the exponential distribution, the normal distribution, and others.

The uniform distribution, as might be expected, does not obey Benford's law. In contrast, the ratio distribution of two uniform distributions is well-described by Benford's law.

Neither the normal distribution nor the ratio distribution of two normal distributions (the Cauchy distribution) obey Benford's law. Although the half-normal distribution does not obey Benford's law, the ratio distribution of two half-normal distributions does. Neither the right-truncated normal distribution nor the ratio distribution of two right-truncated normal distributions are well described by Benford's law. This is not surprising as this distribution is weighted towards larger numbers.

Benford's law also describes the exponential distribution and the ratio distribution of two exponential distributions well. The fit of chi-squared distribution depends on the degrees of freedom (df) with good agreement with df = 1 and decreasing agreement as the df increases. The F-distribution is fitted well for low degrees of freedom. With increasing dfs the fit decreases but much more slowly than the chi-squared distribution. The fit of the log-normal distribution depends on the mean and the variance of the distribution. The variance has a much greater effect on the fit than does the mean. Larger values of both parameters result in better agreement with the law. The ratio of two log normal distributions is a log normal so this distribution was not examined.

Other distributions that have been examined include the Muth distribution, Gompertz distribution, Weibull distribution, gamma distribution, log-logistic distribution and the exponential power distribution all of which show reasonable agreement with the law. The Gumbel distribution – a density increases with increasing value of the random variable – does not show agreement with this law.

Generalization to digits beyond the first
It is possible to extend the law to digits beyond the first. In particular, for any given number of digits, the probability of encountering a number starting with the string of digits n of that length – discarding leading zeros –  is given by

 * $$\log_{10}(n + 1) - \log_{10}(n) = \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{n}\right).$$

Thus, the probability that a number starts with the digits 3, 1, 4 (some examples are 3.14, 3.142, $\pi$, 314280.7, and 0.00314005) is $log_{10}(1 + 1/314) ≈ 0.00138$, as in the box with the log-log graph on the right.

This result can be used to find the probability that a particular digit occurs at a given position within a number. For instance, the probability that a "2" is encountered as the second digit is

 * $$\log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{12}\right) + \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{22}\right) + \cdots + \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{92}\right) \approx 0.109.$$

And the probability that d (d = 0, 1, ..., 9) is encountered as the n-th (n > 1) digit is

 * $$\sum_{k=10^{n-2}}^{10^{n-1}-1} \log_{10}\left(1 + \frac{1}{10k + d}\right).$$

The distribution of the n-th digit, as n increases, rapidly approaches a uniform distribution with 10% for each of the ten digits, as shown below. Four digits is often enough to assume a uniform distribution of 10% as "0" appears 10.0176% of the time in the fourth digit, while "9" appears 9.9824% of the time.

Moments
Average and moments of random variables for the digits 1 to 9 following this law have been calculated:
 * mean 3.440
 * variance 6.057
 * skewness 0.796
 * kurtosis −0.548

For the two-digit distribution according to Benford's law these values are also known:
 * mean 38.590
 * variance 621.832
 * skewness 0.772
 * kurtosis −0.547

A table of the exact probabilities for the joint occurrence of the first two digits according to Benford's law is available, as is the population correlation between the first and second digits: ρ = 0.0561.

In popular culture
Benford's law has appeared as a plot device in some twenty-first century popular entertainment.
 * Television crime drama NUMB3RS used Benford's law in the 2006 episode "The Running Man" to help solve a series of burglaries.
 * The 2016 film The Accountant relied on Benford's law to expose theft of funds from a robotics company.
 * The 2017 Netflix series Ozark used Benford's law to analyze a cartel member's financial statements and uncover fraud.
 * The 2021 Jeremy Robinson novel Infinite 2 applied Benford's law to test whether the characters are in a simulation or reality.
 * In the novel Tom Clancy Point of Contact by Mike Maiden Paul Brown (Forensic Accountant at Hendley Associates) explains Benford's law to Jack Ryan Jr when discussing methods to unveil fraud in accounting books.

title: Benford's law


text:
983

Year 983 (CMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Europe

 * Summer – Diet of Verona: Emperor Otto II (the Red) declares war against the Byzantine Empire and the Emirate of Sicily. He assembles a large expeditionary force for a renewal of an invasion in Calabria (Southern Italy). Otto gifts the Rheingau ("Rhine District") to the Archbishopric of Mainz during the 'Veronese donation'. Otto III is elected king of Germany and Italy.
 * Great Slav Rising: The Polabian Slavs (Wends), mainly Lutici and Obotrite tribes living east of the Elbe River revolt against Christianity and their subjugation to the German (former East Frankish) realm of the Holy Roman Empire. They invade northern Germany, sacking the cities of Havelberg, Brandenburg and Hamburg.
 * King Harald Bluetooth rebels against the overlordship of Otto II. A Danish Viking army under his son Sweyn Forkbeard invades the March of Schleswig – along the northern border of modern Denmark. The Sorb Slavs in northern Germany overrun and conquer the March of Zeitz (Marca Geronis) from Saxon control.
 * December 7 – Otto II dies from a fever in his palace at Rome after a 10-year reign. He is succeeded by his 3-year-old son, Otto III.
 * December 25 – Otto III is crowned at Aachen by Archbishops Willigis of Mainz and John X of Ravenna. The Holy Roman Empire comes under the regency of his mother, Empress consort Theophanu.

Arabian Empire

 * March 26 – 'Adud al-Dawla, ruler (emir) of the Buyid Dynasty, dies after a 34-year reign. He is succeeded by his 20-year-old son Samsam al-Dawla, who is recognised by the Abbasid Caliphate. During al-Dawla's rule his dominions are divided through civil war and revolts (until 987).
 * Fall – Fatimid troops under the defecting Hamdanid governor of Homs, Bakjur, attack Aleppo (modern Syria), but are repulsed through the intervention of the Byzantine army. Bardas Phokas (the Younger) sacks the city, while Bakjur flees to Fatimid territory in Egypt.

China

 * Emperor Sheng Zong of the Khitan-led Liao Dynasty leads an expeditionary force against the Zubu after they killed their own khan and begin to act in defiance of the Khitan.
 * One of the Four Great Books of Song, the encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era is completed in 1,000 volumes, of 4.7 million written Chinese characters.

Religion

 * July 10 – Pope Benedict VII dies after a 9-year reign. Otto II secures the election of the imperial chancellor and appoints John XIV as the 136th pope of the Catholic Church.

Births

 * Abd al-Rahman Sanchuelo, Umayyad chief minister (d. 1009)
 * Anthony of Kiev, Rus' monk and saint (d. 1073)
 * Gunnlaugr Ormstunga, Icelandic poet (approximate date)
 * Odo II, French nobleman and pretender (d. 1037)
 * Wulfnoth Cild, Anglo-Norse nobleman (approximate date)

Deaths

 * March 26 – 'Adud al-Dawla, ruler of the Buyid Dynasty (b. 936)
 * July 10 – Benedict VII, pope of the Catholic Church
 * December 7 – Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 955)
 * Aed Ua Dubhda, king of Uí Fiachrach (Ireland)
 * Ælfhere, Anglo-Saxon ealdorman (approximate date)
 * Antony III (the Studite), patriarch of Constantinople
 * Ibrahim ibn Marzuban, ruler of the Sallarid Dynasty
 * Minamoto no Muneyuki, Japanese nobleman and poet
 * Minamoto no Shitagō, Japanese waka poet (b. 911)
 * Mu'ayyad al-Dawla, ruler of the Buyid Dynasty (b. 942)

title: 983