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Benford Law facts

While investigating facts about Benford's Law and Benford's Law Excel, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Benford's Law, a phenomenon that states the leading number of a naturally occurring number has a roughly 30% chance of being 1, and less than 5% chance of being 9. It's used as legal evidence of fraud, where the fraudsters assume numbers are distributed more uniformly.

how benford law works?

If you take a large real-life dataset(e.g. population in each of the counties in USA) and look at the first digit of the numbers reported there, you are about 6 times more likely to find a '1' than '8' or '9'. Named as Benford's law, this can be used in detection of accounting frauds!!!

What is benford's law used for?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is benford law simple explanation. Here are 14 of the best facts about Benford's Law Analysis and Benford's Law Percentages I managed to collect.

what is benford's law?

  1. Benford's Law can be used to evaluate whether a tax return is likely bogus by analyzing the distribution of digits

  2. According to the first digit law (Benford's law), if you take a random data set of numbers, the digit 1 would be the first digit about 30% of the time, while larger digits would occur in that position less frequently; 9 would appear less than 5% of the time.

  3. Benford's Law which states that in natural number sets small digits (1,2,3) appear more often than larger one, was inspired by looking at logarithm tables the earlier pages (that started with 1) were much more worn than the other pages.

  4. Benford's Law that states that the distribution of first digits in a dataset favors the digit 1, and that this can be used to identify fraud

  5. About Benford's law -- In any large, randomly produced set of natural numbers around 30 percent will begin with the digit 1, 18 percent with 2, and so on, with the smallest percentage beginning with 9. The law is applied in analyzing the validity of statistics and financial records.

  6. Benford's law: In any collection of statistics, a given statistic has roughly a 30% chance of starting with the digit 1.

benford law facts
What is benford's law of probability?

Benford Law data charts

For your convenience take a look at Benford Law figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

benford law fact data chart about U.S. House Disbursements and Benford's Law
U.S. House Disbursements and Benford's Law

benford law fact data chart about Distribution of significant digits in numbers from random da
Distribution of significant digits in numbers from random data sets (Benford's Law)

What is benford's law and why is it important for data science?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

Benford's law describes a common phenomena wherein numbers are much more likely to begin with small digits, 1 2 or 3, than large digits, 7 8 or 9. It can be used to detect fraud because humans have a hard time emulating it.

Benford law infographics

Beautiful visual representation of Benford Law numbers and stats to get perspecive of the whole story.

benford law fact infographic about 2016 Election Fraud Analysis using Benford's Law

2016 Election Fraud Analysis using Benford's Law


This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Benford Law. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Benford Law so important!

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