Related papers: Benford Behavior in Stick Fragmentation Problems
The uneven distribution of digits in numerical data, known as Benford's law, was discovered in 1881. Since then, this law has been shown to be correct in copious numerical data relating to economics, physics and even prime numbers. Although…
The occurrence of the nonzero leftmost digit, i.e., 1, 2, ..., 9, of numbers from many real world sources is not uniformly distributed as one might naively expect, but instead, the nature favors smaller ones according to a logarithmic…
Prime numbers seem to distribute among the natural numbers with no other law than that of chance, however its global distribution presents a quite remarkable smoothness. Such interplay between randomness and regularity has motivated sci-…
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…
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 $[…
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…
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…
A random variable X that is base b Benford will not in general be base c Benford when c is not equal to b. This paper builds on two of my earlier papers and is an attempt to cast some light on the issue of base dependence. Following some…
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 intriguing law of anomalous numbers, also named Benford's law, states that the significant digits of data follow a logarithmic distribution favoring the smallest values. In this work, we test the compliance with this law of the atomic…
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…
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…
The first digit (FD) phenomenon i.e., the significant digits of numbers in large data are often distributed according to a logarithmically decreasing function was first reported by S. Newcomb and then many decades later independently by F.…
We show the leading digits of a variety of systems satisfying certain conditions follow Benford's Law. For each system proving this involves two main ingredients. One is a structure theorem of the limiting distribution, specific to the…
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")…
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…
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.…
A beautiful theorem of Zeckendorf states that every integer can be written uniquely as the sum of non-consecutive Fibonacci numbers $\{ F_i \}_{i = 1}^{\infty}$. A set $S \subset \mathbb{Z}$ is said to satisfy Benford's law if the density…
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…