Benford's Law

Benford's Law describes how in many naturally occurring datasets, smaller leading digits are more common than larger ones. For example, the number 1 appears as the first digit in data about mountains, populations, or financial figures about 30% of the time, while 9 appears less than 5% of the time. This counterintuitive pattern emerges because numbers grow exponentially and datasets span multiple orders of magnitude. Benford's Law helps identify irregularities or fraud since artificially manipulated data often doesn't follow this natural distribution of leading digits.