Benfords Law (or how not to fiddle accounts)

Capt'n Midnight

Supposedly random numbers aren't all that random - due to scale invariant efffects.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html
Benford's law states that in listings, tables of statistics, etc., the digit 1 tends to occur with probability , much greater than the expected 11.1% (i.e., one digit out of 9). Benford's law can be observed, for instance, by examining tables of logarithms and noting that the first pages are much more worn and smudged than later pages

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/one.html
Because what Nigrini knew--and Alex's brother-in-law clearly didn't--was that the digits making up the shop's sales figures should have followed a mathematical rule discovered accidentally over 100 years ago. Known as Benford's law, it is a rule obeyed by a stunning variety of phenomena, from stock market prices to census data to the heat capacities of chemicals. Even a ragbag of figures extracted from newspapers will obey the law's demands that around 30 per cent of the numbers will start with a 1, 18 per cent with a 2, right down to just 4.6 per cent starting with a 9

GuanYin

Haha that second link rips off a newscientist article about 3-4 years old. I remember reading about it in grad school. I spent ages looking around for things to apply Benfolds law to..... then I got bored

smiles

Friend of mine did a young scientist project on it a few years back, got a first in it's catagory (Intermediate Maths I think).... she did some cool stuff with random numbers generated by people and machines.

It's really interesting stuff if you like numbers. Called it "The Power of One" :P

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