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Related papers: Benford's law for the $3x+1$ function

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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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-08-07 Luohan Wang , Bo-Qiang Ma

We present some interesting observations on the 3x+1 problem. We propose a new algorithm which eliminates certain steps while we check the action of 3x+1 procedure on a number. Also, we propose a reason why many numbers follow a similar…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Dhananjay P. Mehendale

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…

Other Statistics · Statistics 2012-11-30 H. M. Bharath

On the 3x+1 problem, given a positive integer $N$, let $D\left( N \right) $, $O\left( N \right) $, $E\left( N \right) $ be the total iteration steps, the odd iteration steps and the even iteration steps when $N$ iterates to 1(except 1)…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2025-07-14 Youchun Luo

Let $g$ be a map from the set of positive integers into itself defined as follows: Let $x$ be a positive integer. If $x$ is odd, then $g(x)=3x+1$, and if $x$ is even, then $g(x)=x/2$. The $3x+1$ conjecture, also called the Collatz…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2021-11-24 J. Llibre , C. Valls

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

Benford's law states that for many random variables X > 0 its leading digit D = D(X) satisfies approximately the equation P(D = d) = log_{10}(1 + 1/d) for d = 1,2,...,9. This phenomenon follows from another, maybe more intuitive fact,…

Probability · Mathematics 2008-06-25 Lutz Duembgen , Christoph Leuenberger

The 3X+1 function T(n) is (3n+1)/2 if n is odd and n/2 if n is even. The total stopping time \sigma_\infty (n) for a positive integer n is the number of iterations of the 3x+1 function to reach 1 starting from n, and is \infty if 1 is never…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2007-05-23 David Applegate , Jeffrey C. Lagarias

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…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-01-04 Alex Ely Kossovsky

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…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2013-11-20 Aaron D. Slepkov , Kevin B. Ironside , David DiBattista

It is well-known that sequences such as the Fibonacci numbers and the factorials satisfy Benford's Law, that is, leading digits in these sequences occur with frequencies given by $P(d)=\log_{10}(1+1/d)$, $d=1,2,\dots,9$. In this paper, we…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2021-08-10 Zhaodong Cai , A. J. Hildebrand , Junxian Li

The 3x+1 semigroup is the multiplicative semigroup generated by the rational numbers of form (2k+1)/(3k+2) for non-negative k, together with 2. This semigroup encodes backward iteration under the 3x+1 map, and the 3x+1 conjecture implies…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2007-05-23 David Applegate , Jeffrey C. Lagarias

Here we prove that Benford's law holds for coefficients of an infinite class of modular forms. Expanding the work of Bringmann and Ono on exact formulas for harmonic Maass forms, we derive the necessary asymptotics. This implies that the…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2010-09-07 Theresa Anderson , Larry Rolen , Ruth Stoehr

Let C be some class of objects equipped with a set of simplifying moves. When we apply these to a given object M in C as long as possible, we get a root of M. Our main result is that under certain conditions the root of any object exists…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2009-04-10 Cynthia Hog-Angeloni , Sergei Matveev

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

In the literature, Benford's Law is considered for base-b expansions where b>1 is an integer. In this paper, we investigate the distribution of leading "digits" of a sequence of positive integers under other expansions such as Zeckendorf…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2023-09-04 Sungkon Chang , Steven J. Miller

The Collatz Conjecture (also known as the 3x+1 Problem) proposes that the following algorithm will, after a certain number of iterations, always yield the number 1: given a natural number, multiply by three and add one if the number is odd,…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2020-01-28 Matt Hohertz , Bahman Kalantari

We prove in this note that, for an alphabet with three letters, the set of first return to a given word in a set satisfying the tree condition is a basis of the free group.

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…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2022-07-18 Henry Glunz

We discuss a recursive family of iterative methods for the numerical approximation of roots of nonlinear functions in one variable. These methods are based on Newton-Cotes closed quadrature rules. We prove that when a quadrature rule with…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2014-09-10 Mario M. Graça , Pedro M. Lima