[quote=HungLikeJesus;780792]Benford's Law
From
Wikipedia:
Quote:
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This counter-intuitive result has been found to apply to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, physical and mathematical constants, and processes described by power laws (which are very common in nature). It tends to be most accurate when values are distributed across multiple orders of magnitude.
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OK, pls explain to me why this is "counter-intuitive ?
and, what difference would it make if it was distributed across orders of magnitude.
If I am going to count anything, I start with "1". Therefore in a set of any size,
there will always be a larger number of "1's" than of "2's" than of "3's"...etc.
And to point out the obvious, in small sets, there may not even be a "9" or "0"
In the examples of the quote above,
a small town might have street addresses of 100's, 200's... to 700's, but no 800's or 900's. etc.
I guess I'm not getting Benford's idea of the whole thing.
