# r2-edh-b1-03

**Claim (as registered):** The training slice's heavy-tailed province-size structure (many small provinces, a few very large ones) recurs in the holdout: at least 12 of the 32 holdout provinces land with fewer than 300 inscriptions, AND at least 5 land with 1,000 or more.

**Proposed mechanism:** The same unevenness-of-recovery pattern as the two claims above, expressed as a shape claim over the whole province-size distribution rather than a claim about the largest provinces specifically.

**Scope:** Source: the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg (EDH), a catalogue of Roman-period inscriptions on stone/metal/etc. (physical objects, catalogued separately from a manuscript census). Training: the 33 provinces in the alphabetically first half of EDH's own province-code order (42,009 inscriptions). Holdout: the 33 provinces in the alphabetically second half, minus 'Provincia incerta' (EDH's own catch-all for uncertain findspots, not a real geographic unit, excluded from all arithmetic) -- 32 real provinces, 39,457 inscriptions -- landed in one complete fetch after the claim was fixed. EDH's own content has been fixed since 2021 (the cataloguing project's funding ended), so this holdout tests whether a pattern generalizes across an arbitrary alphabetical split of already-catalogued, unchanging material, not whether it predicts new discoveries.

**Training-side evidence:** 18 of the 33 training-side provinces (54.5%) land under 300 inscriptions; 9 of 33 (27.3%) land at 1,000 or more.

**Holdout test and outcome:** Exactly 12 of the 32 holdout provinces land under 300 inscriptions (precisely the registered floor); 15 of 32 land at 1,000 or more (well past the registered floor of 5).

**Status:** Survived (both clauses of the conjunction cleared).
