Okay, so, about this Benford’s Law thing. I wanted to see if it really works, right? So, I got this idea from some stuff I saw online about how it can supposedly detect fraud and works with naturally occurring data.
First, I gathered some data. I didn’t want anything too specific, like, you know, heights or weights, because I read that it doesn’t work well with that kind of stuff. So, I grabbed a bunch of numbers from some financial reports I found, stuff like sales figures and market values. A real mixed bag.
Then, I wrote a simple script. Nothing fancy, just something to count the first digit of each number. I made a list of all the numbers, and then for each one, I looked at the first digit and kept a tally. Like, how many times ‘1’ shows up, how many times ‘2’ shows up, and so on.
After that, I crunched the numbers. I calculated the percentage for each first digit. According to Benford’s Law, ‘1’ should be the most common, about 30% of the time. Then it goes down from there, with ‘9’ being the least common.
Here’s what I found:
- 1: Showed up about 29% of the time, which is pretty close to what the law predicts.
- 2: Around 18%, also in the ballpark.
- 3: Near 13%.
- 4: Roughly 10%.
And it kept going down like that. It wasn’t perfect, you know, but it was surprisingly close to the percentages that Benford’s Law lays out. It kind of blew my mind a little, to be honest. I mean, who would have thought that the first digits in a bunch of random numbers would follow such a specific pattern?
My Conclusion
So, yeah, it seems like Benford’s Law actually holds up, at least with the data I used. It’s not just some statistical mumbo-jumbo. It’s like there’s some hidden order in the chaos of numbers. I can totally see why people use this for fraud detection now. If the numbers stray too far from this pattern, it might be a red flag that something fishy is going on.
Anyway, it was a fun little experiment. I’m no statistician, but it was cool to see this thing in action with my own eyes. Makes you wonder what other hidden patterns are out there, just waiting to be discovered.
