<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>Yeah, I first heard about this in connection with catching embezzlers. People who faked books often will use a completely random distribution in the accounts, when the real world distro tends to fit Benford's Law.</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
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<DIV>Dan</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif"><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Michael LaTorra <mlatorra@gmail.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> WTA Talk <wta-talk@transhumanism.org>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Tue, June 15, 2010 10:17:34 PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> [ExI] Benford's Law<BR></FONT><BR>
<DIV>"Benford's Law is the observation that most “real-world” data is not uniformly distributed - in fact, the probability that the first digit is a “1” is almost one-third, rather than the expected one-ninth. The reason for this is that the *logarithm* of most real-world data is uniformly distributed. I find this mildly fascinating." - David Dalrymple</DIV>
<DIV>http://blog.davidad.net/</DIV></DIV></DIV></div><br>
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