One More Time: The Oddities of Benford's Law

If we asked all of our listeners to look up the current population of their hometown and email us just the first digit of that number, what do you expect we'd find? Would the digits be evenly distributed, or would some be more common than others? In this episode, we look at Benford's Law, and learn some surprising truths about the distribution of numbers in natural data sets.

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Questions Answered in the Episode: • What is Benford's Law and how does it predict the frequency of leading digits in data sets? • Why do natural data sets like city populations and surface areas often follow a logarithmic distribution of first digits?