rexswain.com — A growing number of statisticians, accountants and mathematicians are convinced that an astonishing mathematical theorem known as Benford's Law is a powerful and relatively simple tool for pointing suspicion at frauds, embezzlers, tax evaders, sloppy accountants and even computer bugs.
Jan 28, 2006 View in Crawl 4
skimitarJan 29, 2006
I remember reading about this years ago in New Scientist (unfortunately, they no longer have a copy of the article on their site - it was called the "Power of One") - that's not a criticism BTW - i dugg it - numbers never get old. Another good write up (though more technical) is at <a class="user" href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html">http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html</a>I had access to a large numeric database at the time through work and tested this following the NS article - sure enough, the log probabilities held. Confirming something for yourself is always fun (i.e. I really needed to get a life)
dirtyfratboyJan 29, 2006Submitter
@MikeKnoopI think that "square picture animated gif" is called an "ad."
trogdoorJan 29, 2006
"in binary, all the numbers start with 1.ooh, spooky"except 0.
dalleJan 29, 2006
Great article, I like these kind of stuff, although I suck at math. :-D
cvrti5Jan 30, 2006
Interesting, but as a mathematician I am not impressed by the explanation.
frostythedmanJan 31, 2006
Something tells me that the number 1 comes up on the logarithm that tells us how many times Benford (or any mathematician) gets laid... still better than mine though (lil self deprecation in case the IRS mathematicians are reading my post).