We propose a probabilistic interpretation of Benford’s law, which predicts the probability distribution of all digits in everyday-life numbers. Heuri- stically, our point of view consists in considering an everyday-life number as a continuous random variable taking value in an interval [0,A], whose maximum A is itself an everyday-life number. This approach can be linked to the chara- cterization of Benford’s law by scale-invariance, as well as to the convergence of a product of independent random variables to Benford’s law. It also allows to generalize Flehinger’s result about the convergence of iterations of Cesaro- averages to Benford’s law
A UNIFYING PROBABILISTIC INTERPRETATION OF BENFORD’S LAW
GIULIANO, RITA;
2010-01-01
Abstract
We propose a probabilistic interpretation of Benford’s law, which predicts the probability distribution of all digits in everyday-life numbers. Heuri- stically, our point of view consists in considering an everyday-life number as a continuous random variable taking value in an interval [0,A], whose maximum A is itself an everyday-life number. This approach can be linked to the chara- cterization of Benford’s law by scale-invariance, as well as to the convergence of a product of independent random variables to Benford’s law. It also allows to generalize Flehinger’s result about the convergence of iterations of Cesaro- averages to Benford’s lawI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
