Benford’s Law, also known as the first digit law, reflects that in real-life sets of numerical

data, the leading digit will most likely be small. The formula of Benford’s law is below.

Below is the probability distribution table of leading digits according to Benford’s law in
both table and graph form.
Benford’s Law was first conceptualized in 1881 by astronomer Simon Newcomb who
noticed that the earlier pages of logarithm tables were much more worn out than later
ones. He created a formula whereby the probability of a single number N being the first
digit of a number was equal to log(N+1) - log(N). The law was explored again in 1938 by
Frank Benford. He tested the data on many different domains and was subsequently
credited for it. He tested the theory on rivers, population, physical constants and
molecular weights. It was officially named after Benford after he published a paper in
1938 titled, ‘The Law of Anomalous Numbers.’

Some examples of where Benford’s law is applied into real life situations include:
Spotting accounting fraud. When people attempt to fabricate figures and data sets, they
may make the mistake of having a uniform distribution of leading digits. If you compare
fraudulent figures towards Benford’s law, the fraudulent activity can be easily
discovered. Benford’s law is also applicable to Genome data. Genome size differs
between Eukaryotes and Prokrayotes. Genome size in Eukaryotes follows Benford’s
Law whereas Prokrayotes does not. This is an easy way to distinguish between the two.

Ultimately, Benford’s law remains a timeless pillar of modern mathematical findings and
allows for a simple way to predict and spot fraudulence of data sets in many corporate
and working fields.
QUESTION 5 SECTION I

The distribution of my data agrees with Benford’s law with a small discrepancy between the
values of 6-9. One limitation to the data values is quantity. Benford’s Law is a distribution that is
approached by a data set of increasingly large size. Since our data set is of finite size, it is
expected that there will be small discrepancies from Benford’s law. One limitation of the
calculations made in Question 4B is that whilst calculating Standard deviation, more weight is
given to extreme values and less is given to those near the mean.
SECTION 1 QUESTION 6 - BIBLIOGRAPHY

1 A Simple Explanation of Benford's Law

Author(s): R. M. Fewster

Source: The American Statistician , Feb., 2009, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp.
26-32 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the American Statistical
Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644089

2 Howard, S., 2015. A simple explanation of Benford's Law. [online] Statistics

HOWTO. Available at: <https://www.statisticshowto.com/benfords-law/>

[Accessed 16 November 2021].

3 Weissteen, E., 2008. Benford's Law. [online] Wolfram Mathematics. Available at:
<https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html>

[Accessed 16 November 2021].

4 Forman, A., 2010. The Newcomb-Benford Law in Its Relation to Some Common
Distributions. [online] PMC. Available at:
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866333/>

[Accessed 16 November 2021].