Re: Benford's Law Question

In article <LJ6dnTj4yLGFj8_YnZ2dnUVZ_vSdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert11 <rgsros@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Read 78,254 of them, but not being a mathematician, or a scientist, still
have
trouble in discerning the salient point of "why is it so" ?

Any distribution that represents something in the real world is likely
to have an upper limit. Unless the limit
happens to be a power of ten, there are going to be powers of ten
which occur multiplied by small digits but not large ones.

For example, if the house numbers in a street go up to 45,
there are going to be 1 each of the single digit numbers,
10 each of two-digit numbers starting 1-3, and t starting with
4. If the numbers go up to 150, you can see there will be
far more starting with 1 than any other digit. Add up the
numbers for lots of streets, and the 1s will dominate,
followed by the 2s and so on.

If the distribution has a lower bound, or an interesting shape, it may
disrupt this effect. Consider the distribution of human heights in
feet, or inches. But reduce the unit size to centimetres and surprise!

-- Richard
--
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.
.

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