A Simple Explanation of Benford's Law
@article{Fewster2009ASE,
title={A Simple Explanation of Benford's Law},
author={R. M. Fewster},
journal={The American Statistician},
year={2009},
volume={63},
pages={26 - 32}
}Benfords Law occurs is, however, elusive. Many researchers have verified for themselves that the law is widely obeyed, but have also noted that the popular explanations are not completely satisfying. In this article we do nothing rigorous, but provide a simple, intuitive explanation of why and when the law applies. It is intended that the explanation should be accessible to school students and anyone with a basic knowledge of probability density curves and logarithms.
Paper Mentions
Blog Post
Blog Post
97 Citations
Benford’s Law Strikes Back: No Simple Explanation in Sight for Mathematical Gem
- Computer Science
- 2011
- 63
- PDF
Benford's Law and why the integers are not what we think they are: A critical numeracy of Benford's law
- Mathematics
- 2013
- 2
- Highly Influenced
- PDF
Generalized Benford’s Law as a Lie Detector
- Mathematics, Medicine
- Advances in cognitive psychology
- 2017
- 8
- PDF
Benford's Law of First Digits: From mathematical Curiosity to Change Detector
- Computer Science
- 2011
- 20
- PDF
References
SHOWING 1-9 OF 9 REFERENCES
Cubic Splines for Estimating the Distribution of Residence Time Using Individual Resightings Data
- Mathematics
- 2009
- 16
Breaking the (Benford) Law: Statistical Fraud Detection in Campaign Finance,’
- The American Statistician,
- 2007
Chapter 34 in The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing
- 2007
Explaining Benford’s Law,’’ Chapter 34 in The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing. Available at http:// www.dspguide.com
- 2007
Directional Statistics, Chichester: Wiley, Example
- 2000
The Law of Anomalous Numbers,’
- Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,
- 1938