First digit law from Laplace transform

DOI10.1016/J.PHYSLETA.2019.03.017MaRDI QIDQ2231189zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Mingshu Cong, Congqiao Li, Bo-Qiang Ma

Publication date 29 September 2021

Published in Physics Letters. A (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00352

zbMATH Keywords

Benford's lawfirst digit lawLaplace transform

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Probability distributions: general theory (60E05)

Abstract: The occurrence of digits 1 through 9 as the leftmost nonzero digit of numbers from real-world sources is distributed unevenly according to an empirical law, known as Benford's law or the first digit law. It remains obscure why a variety of data sets generated from quite different dynamics obey this particular law. We perform a study of Benford's law from the application of the Laplace transform, and find that the logarithmic Laplace spectrum of the digital indicator function can be approximately taken as a constant. This particular constant, being exactly the Benford term, explains the prevalence of Benford's law. The slight variation from the Benford term leads to deviations from Benford's law for distributions which oscillate violently in the inverse Laplace space. We prove that the whole family of completely monotonic distributions can satisfy Benford's law within a small bound. Our study suggests that Benford's law originates from the way that we write numbers, thus should be taken as a basic mathematical knowledge.

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Cites work

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Cited in

(4)

• The first-digit frequencies in data of turbulent flows
• Benford analysis of quantum critical phenomena: first digit provides high finite-size scaling exponent while first two and further are not much better
• The value of the last digit: statistical fraud detection with digit analysis
• Images and Benford's law

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Uses Software

• Algorithm 368

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