Related papers: Explicit bounds for the approximation error in Ben…
According to Benford's Law, many data sets have a bias towards lower leading digits (about $30\%$ are $1$'s). The applications of Benford's Law vary: from detecting tax, voter and image fraud to determining the possibility of match-fixing…
The goal of this note is to show that a widespread claim about Benford's Law, namely, that the range of every Benford distribution spans at least several orders of magnitude, is false. The proof is constructive and concrete examples are…
For arbitrary Borel probability measures with compact support on the real line, characterizations are established of the best finitely supported approximations, relative to three familiar probability metrics (Levy, Kantorovich, and…
We found that in transition arrays of complex atomic spectra, the strengths of electric-dipolar lines obey Benford's law, which means that their significant digits follow a logarithmic distribution favoring the smallest values. This…
Considering the first significant digits (noted d) in data sets of dissipation for turbulent flows, the probability to find a given number (d=1 or 2 or... 9) would be 1/9 for an uniform distribution. Instead the probability closely follows…
The so-called Benford's laws are of frequent use in order to observe anomalies and regularities in data sets, in particular, in election results and financial statements. Yet, basic financial market indices have not been much studied, if…
The diverse applications of the Benford law attract investigators working in various fields of physics, biology and sociology. At the same time, the groundings of the Benford law remain obscure. Our paper demonstrates that the Benford law…
Benford's law is an empirical edict stating that the lower digits appear more often than higher ones as the first few significant digits in statistics of natural phenomena and mathematical tables. A marked proportion of such analyses is…
This article provides a concise overview of the main mathematical theory of Benford's law in a form accessible to scientists and students who have had first courses in calculus and probability. In particular, one of the main objectives here…
Bounds of the accuracy of the normal approximation to the distribution of a sum of independent random variables are improved under relaxed moment conditions, in particular, under the absence of moments of orders higher than the second.…
A phenomenological law, called Benford's law, states that the occurrence of the first digit, i.e., $1,2,...,9$, of numbers from many real world sources is not uniformly distributed, but instead favors smaller ones according to a logarithmic…
Infrared spectra of various polymers were treated statistically. It was established that for the absorbance spectra the Benford distribution of leading digits takes place, whereas the distribution of leading digits for transmittance spectra…
In this paper, we present a possible theoretical explanation for benford's law. We develop a recursive relation between the probabilities, using simple intuitive ideas. We first use numerical solutions of this recursion and verify that the…
We prove connections between Zeckendorf decompositions and Benford's law. Recall that if we define the Fibonacci numbers by $F_1 = 1, F_2 = 2$ and $F_{n+1} = F_n + F_{n-1}$, every positive integer can be written uniquely as a sum of…
Exponential growth occurs when the growth rate of a given quantity is proportional to the quantity's current value. Surprisingly, when exponential growth data is plotted as a simple histogram disregarding the time dimension, a remarkable…
This article presents a concise proof of the famous Benford's law when the distribution has a Riemann integrable probability density function and provides a criterion to judge whether a distribution obeys the law. The proof is intuitive and…
Benford's law is frequently used to evaluate the likihood that data is misrepresentative. Typically statistical tests measure the likihood. Another method of employing Benford's law is to compare the frequency of leading digits to the…
Benford's Law describes the prevalence of small numbers as the leading digits of numbers in many sets of integers. We prove a variant of Benford's law for many positive-density subsets of the primes. This follows from a more general result…
According to Benford's law, the most significant digit in many datasets is not uniformly distributed, but obeys a well defined power law distribution with smaller digits appearing more often. Among one of the myriad particle physics…
Benford's law is a statistical inference to predict the frequency of significant digits in naturally occurring numerical databases. In such databases this law predicts a higher occurrence of the digit 1 in the most significant place and…