Related papers: Benford's law from 1881 to 2006
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…
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 $[…
Long birth time series for Romania are investigated from Benford's law point of view, distinguishing between families with a religious (Orthodox and Non-Orthodox) affiliation. The data extend from Jan. 01, 1905 till Dec. 31, 2001, i.e. over…
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…
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.…
Benford's law is an empirical observation, first reported by Simon Newcomb in 1881 and then independently by Frank Benford in 1938: the first significant digits of numbers in large data are often distributed according to a logarithmically…
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 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.…
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…
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…
This is a survey article to be part of the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics, to be published by Elsevier in the beginning of 2006.
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…
Not only motivated by the fact that the publication of the GAFT first appeared 60 years ago in print we reconstruct its history and so show that it is no exaggeration to claim that it has appeared already 75 years ago!
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…
The following annotated bibliography contains a reasonably complete survey of contemporary work in the philosophy of astrophysics. Spanning approximately forty years from the early 1980s to the present day, the bibliography should help…
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…
The Newcomb-Benford Law, which is also called the first digit phenomenon, has applications in diverse phenomena ranging from social and computer networks, engineering systems, natural sciences, and accounting. In forensics, it has been used…
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…
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…