Related papers: The Mathematics of Benford's Law -- A Primer

The probability that a number in many naturally occurring tables of numerical data has first significant digit $d$ is predicted by Benford's Law ${\rm Prob} (d) = \log_{10} (1 + {\displaystyle{1\over d}}), d = 1, 2 >..., 9$. Illustrations…

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…

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…

It is pointed out that the language of quotient groups and wrapped distributions allows an elementary discussion of Benford's Law, and adds arguments supporting wide-spread observability of this statistics.

The following work is written in easy language for college level students. It shows how the first digit probabilities of a group of continuous real-valued functions can be calculated. Thus, examples explaining how the probabilities are…

Benford's law predicts the occurrence of the $n^{\mathrm{th}}$ digit of numbers in datasets originating from various sources of the world, ranging from financial data to atomic spectra. It is intriguing that although many features of…

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 an empirical law predicting the distribution of the first significant digits of numbers obtained from natural phenomena and mathematical tables. It has been found to be applicable for numbers coming from a plethora of…

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…

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…

Benford's law is an empirical ``law'' governing the frequency of leading digits in numerical data sets. Surprisingly, for mathematical sequences the predictions derived from it can be uncannily accurate. For example, among the first billion…

Benford's Law describes the finding that the distribution of leading (or leftmost) digits of innumerable datasets follows a well-defined logarithmic trend, rather than an intuitive uniformity. In practice this means that the most common…

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…

Many systems exhibit a digit bias. For example, the first digit base 10 of the Fibonacci numbers, or of $2^n$, equals 1 not 10% or 11% of the time, as one would expect if all digits were equally likely, but about 30% of the time. This…

This paper has several major purposes. The central purpose is to describe the "Benford analysis" of a positive random variable and to summarize some results from investigations into base dependence of Benford random variables. The principal…

Many mathematical, man-made and natural systems exhibit a leading-digit bias, where a first digit (base 10) of 1 occurs not 11\% of the time, as one would expect if all digits were equally likely, but rather 30\%. This phenomenon is known…

A simple method to derive parametric analytical extensions of Benford's law for first digits of numerical data is proposed. Two generalized Benford distributions are considered, namely the two-sided power Benford distribution and the new…

Feller's classic text 'An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications' contains a derivation of the well known significant-digit law called Benford's law. More specifically, Feller gives a sufficient condition ("large spread")…

In this paper, we will see that the proportion of d as leading digit, d $\in$ 1, 9, in data (obtained thanks to the hereunder developed model) is more likely to follow a law whose probability distribution is determined by a specific upper…

Benford's Law is an empirical law which predicts the frequency of significant digits in databases corresponding to various phenomena, natural or artificial. Although counter intuitive at the first sight, it predicts a higher occurrence of…