Assignment 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Assignment 4 - Essay Example So pick a card, any card. Wouldnt you think that your odds of finding a number starting with 1 would be the same as finding a number starting with 9? Or 3? Or 7? (See Figure 1) After all, you gathered as many different numbers from as many different locations as possible, so they should all be evenly distributed, right? Wrong!!! Here comes Benfords Law, bitch! Benfords law says that the odds of obtaining 1 as the first digit of a number are much higher than obtaining any other digit. (See Figure 2) And nobody can really explain why! Creeeepy. But the coolest thing is that the broader the sampling of numbers, the more accurately they conform to Benfords law. For example, if you only examined the numbers in a New York City phone book, it wouldnt fit with Benfords law because your data would favor 2s and 7s (because of the popular area codes 212 and 718). But mix a phone books numbers with an almanacs numbers with an encyclopedias numbers and without a doubt youll start seeing a "Benfordian" distribution. Didnt I tell you this shitd freak you out? But the most important part of Benfords law (and partially why its so fascinating) is that it only works with numbers observed and gathered from the real world. So if you were to randomly generate a list of numbers with a computer, or by simply making them up, their first digits would most likely be evenly distributed from 1-9 and NOT in accordance with Benfords law. (See Figure 1 again). For this reason, Benfords law is used by the IRS to spot defrauders who make up phony numbers, because if the numbers dont follow Benfords law, they werent from real transactions. Fascinated by all this, I decided to test it for myself. Rather than spend years gathering numbers from all over the world, I decided to turn to Google - arguably the broadest source of data in existence. Seeing how many results Google finds for a number is a surefire way to judge how many times