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Benford's law states that many data sets have a bias towards lower leading digits (about $30\%$ are 1s). There are numerous applications, from designing efficient computers to detecting tax, voter and image fraud. It's important to know…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-01-20 Victoria Cuff , Allison Lewis , Steven J. Miller

The occurrence of first significant digits of numbers in large data is often governed by a logarithmically decreasing distribution called Benford's law (BL), reported first by S. Newcomb (SN) and many decades later independently by F.…

Digital Libraries · Computer Science 2016-03-22 Tariq Ahmad Mir

Researchers have observed that the frequencies of leading digits in many man-made and naturally occurring datasets follow a logarithmic curve, with digits that start with the number 1 accounting for $\sim 30\%$ of all numbers in the dataset…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2022-12-22 Leo Hsu , Visar Berisha

Benford's law is the statement that in many real world data sets, the probability of having digit $d$ in base $B$ as the first digit is \log_{B}\!\left(\frac{d+1}{d}\right) for all $1 \leq d \leq B$. We sometimes refer to this as weak…

Probability · Mathematics 2026-03-06 Bruce Fang , Steven J. Miller

The scope of this paper is twofold. First, to emphasize the use of the mod 1 map in exploring the digit distribution of random variables. We show that the well-known base- and scale-invariance of Benford variables are consequences of their…

Probability · Mathematics 2013-12-24 Azar Khosravani , Constantin Rasinariu

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 Newcomb-Benford law, also known as the first-digit law, gives the probability distribution associated with the first digit of a dataset, so that, for example, the first significant digit has a probability of $30.1$ % of being $1$ and…

Popular Physics · Physics 2021-08-25 Andrea Burgos , Andrés Santos

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…

Statistical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2021-04-28 Marcel Ausloos , Valerio Ficcadenti , Gurjeet Dhesi , Muhammad Shakeel

That the logarithmic distribution manifests itself in the random as well as in the deterministic (multiplication processes) has long intrigued researchers in Benford's Law. In this article it is argued that it springs from one common…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-11-01 Alex Ely Kossovsky

Kossovsky recently conjectured that the distribution of leading digits of a chain of probability distributions converges to Benford's law as the length of the chain grows. We prove his conjecture in many cases, and provide an interpretation…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-09-15 Dennis Jang , Jung Uk Kang , Alex Kruckman , Jun Kudo , Steven J. Miller

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-04-22 Arno Berger , Theodore P. Hill

We show how Benford's Law (BL) for first, second, ..., digits, emerges from the distribution of digits of numbers of the type $a^{R}$, with $a$ any real positive number and $R$ a set of real numbers uniformly distributed in an interval $[…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-09-22 Victor Romero-Rochin

A random variable (r.v.) X is said to follow Benford's law if log(X) is uniform mod 1. Many experimental data sets prove to follow an approximate version of it, and so do many mathematical series and continuous random variables. This…

Probability · Mathematics 2009-10-09 Nicolas Gauvrit , Jean-Paul Delahaye

We address the task of identifying anomalous observations by analyzing digits under the lens of Benford's law. Motivated by the crucial objective of providing reliable statistical analysis of customs declarations, we answer one major and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-14 Lucio Barabesi , Andrea Cerioli , Andrea Cerasa , Domenico Perrotta

This article provides a brief overview on a range of basic dynamical systems that conform to the logarithmic distribution of significant digits known as Benford's law. As presented here, most theorems are special cases of known, more…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2025-01-27 Arno Berger , Theodore P. Hill

Benford's Law predicts that the first significant digit on the leftmost side of numbers in real-life data is proportioned between all possible 1 to 9 digits approximately as in LOG(1 + 1/digit), so that low digits occur much more frequently…

Physics and Society · Physics 2020-01-22 Alex Ely Kossovsky

The occurrence of digits one through nine as the leftmost nonzero digit of numbers from real world sources is often not uniformly distributed, but instead, is distributed according to a logarithmic law, known as Benford's law. Here, we…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2010-05-14 Lijing Shao , Bo-Qiang Ma

Benford's law describes the distribution of the first digit of numbers appearing in a wide variety of numerical data, including tax records, and election outcomes, and has been used to raise "red flags" about potential anomalies in the data…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2022-05-27 Tianyi Chen , Charalampos E. Tsourakakis

Benford's law, or the law of the first significant digit, has been subjected to numerous studies due to its unique applications in financial fields, especially accounting and auditing. However, studies that addressed the law's establishment…

General Economics · Economics 2025-01-07 M. R. Sarkandiz

We discuss a common suspicion about reported financial data, in 10 industrial sectors of the 6 so called "main developing countries" over the time interval [2000-2014]. These data are examined through Benford's law first significant digit…

Statistical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2017-12-04 Jing Shi , Marcel Ausloos , Tingting Zhu