this story is from December 31, 2005


Take any set of numbers from any category anywhere such as the areas of different rivers of the world, the day's stock quotations, tournament tennis scores, numbers appearing on the newspaper front page, city populations, electricity bills over the past two years, molecular weights of compounds, half-lives of radioactive atoms - anything in fact with no connection with one another.
What's the chance that any particular number (not zero though) will be the first digit?

Obviously one chance in nine for any number 1 to 9 right? Wrong. According to Benford's Law the chances of the number 1 coming in the first place is hugely higher than, say, the number 9.

The actual percentage breakdown for numbers from 1 through 9 is: 30.1%, 17.6%, 12.5%, 9.7%, 7.9%, 6.7%, 5.8%, 5.1%, 4.6%. And how do you think Mr Benford discovered this?

Well, way back in 1938 he noticed that pages of logarithms corresponding to numbers starting with the numeral 1 were much dirtier and more worn than other pages. Any idea why this weird stuff happens?

Yeah, yeah, scram immediately to Google. At least you'll thank me for helping you waste your precious time a little constructively for once.

And for those without connectivity, how do you think you can turn 180 degrees around to face the other way while standing on ice that's so slippery it's frictionless? No there's no unique answer but best one's will make it.
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