Benford's Law: Nearly 30% of Natural Real-World Numbers Begin With the Digit '1'
From river lengths to city populations and tax filings, the leading digit '1' appears 30.1% of the time, while '9' shows up only 4.6%.
🔢 Digit Distribution
Forensic Statistics & Scale Invariance
Roughly what % of real-world numbers start with the digit '1'?
When people invent fake data, they tend to pick digits uniformly—violating Benford's logarithmic leading-digit curve.
📊 Statistics
Digit Distribution
Why / How?
Scientific Mechanism
First noticed in 1881 when astronomer Simon Newcomb saw that the early pages of shared logarithm books were far more worn than the back pages, Benford's Law emerges whenever quantities span multiple orders of magnitude. Forensic auditors still use it to spot fabricated financial records.
Why It Matters
When people invent fake data, they tend to pick digits uniformly—violating Benford's logarithmic leading-digit curve.
