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Pimbley, JM (2014)

Benford’s Law as a Logarithmic Transformation

Maxwell Consulting Archives. Last retrieved 20 April 2018.

ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: Not available at this time.



Abstract: We review the history and description of Benford’s Law - the observation that many naturally occurring numerical data collections exhibit a logarithmic distribution of digits. By creating numerous hypothetical examples, we identify several cases that satisfy Benford’s Law and several that do not. Building on prior work, we create and demonstrate a “Benford Test” to determine from the functional form of a probability density function whether the resulting distribution of digits will find close agreement with Benford’s Law. We also discover that one may generalize the first-digit distribution algorithm to include non-logarithmic transformations. This generalization shows that Benford’s Law rests on the tendency of the transformed and shifted data to exhibit a uniform distribution.


Bibtex:
@misc{, AUTHOR = {Pimbley, Joseph M.}, TITLE = {Benford’s Law as a Logarithmic Transformation}, ORGANIZATION = {Maxwell Consulting}, YEAR = {2014}, URL = {http://www.maxwell-consulting.com/Benford_Logarithmic_Transformation.pdf}, NOTE={Last retrieved 10 September 2014}, }


Reference Type: E-Print

Subject Area(s): General Interest