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Neat article about the probability of different digits in da

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Ladarzak
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07 Nov 2009, 11:26 pm

http://www.rexswain.com/benford.html



leejosepho
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07 Nov 2009, 11:45 pm

An interesting read!


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Fuzzy
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08 Nov 2009, 5:49 am

I knew of benfords law, but this article is great. Thanks.


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08 Nov 2009, 6:48 pm

Nice find. The trick with Benford's Law is to know when it is reasonable to apply it, and when it is not. The same with so-called power laws, which are getting a lot of press these days.



aleclair
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08 Nov 2009, 8:39 pm

I saw this on Reddit a while back and thought it was fairly interesting. My dad (who's studying statistics right now) actually e-mailed the professor quoted in that article and got a fairly quick and cogent response about the connection between coin flips and Benford's law.

Just another one of many misconceptions of randomness we have about randomness - one of which is our use of the word "random" - as in "that was so random". We really should be saying "That was so arbitrary", I think. Certainly it does not have the flow of using "random", but it seems more accurate. What do you think?