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SoCoder -> Link Home -> Just for Fun |
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HoboBen
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Fun (and Fraud Detection) with Benford's Lawhttps://www.kirix.com/blog/2008/07/22/fun-and-fraud-detection-with-benfords-law/ |
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Lovely flash video to explain the topic. I won't spoil it for you, click the link 
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Comments |
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 01:24 | |
shroom_monk
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That's quite interesting...
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 04:44 | |
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Afr0 |
This law is absolute bullocks. I tried it yesterday, and even though the law clearly states that the chance of me smoking only 1 cigarette per day is bigger than the chance of me smoking... say... 5, I ended up smoking about 3 cigarettes! And I even have a cold! 
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 05:57 | |
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shroom_monk
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In a situation such as how many cigarettes you smoke, I expect that most people smoke the same number per day. It means for several people, say a sample of 1000, how many each of them smokes.
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 08:54 | |
steve_ancell
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Oye... You should'nt smoke, it's naughty  .
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 12:46 | |
blanko1324
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That's really interesting.
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| Friday, 25 July 2008, 12:55 | |
HoboBen
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Something to bear in mind next time you commit fraud, eh?
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| Saturday, 09 May 2009, 14:31 | |
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HoboBen
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Far too drunk to read the whole article or even the actual study, but apparently prime numbers have just recently been proven to follow Benford's Law. Or something. I'll read it again properly tomorrow, but lots of people seem excited about it. www.physorg.com/news160994102.html www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8j3cw/new_discovered_prime_numbers_pattern/ pyevolve.sourceforge.net/wordpress/?p=527 |
| Saturday, 09 May 2009, 14:46 | |
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Nolan |
This doesn't seem surprising to me. Take a basketball game, for instance. For the score to be a 6, for instance, the score would have had to pass by 1-5. Imagine a score of 29. Here, there are 15 numbers with a low last digit (0-4), and 15 with a high last digit (5-9), meaning there's an equal chance of getting a high number as there is a low number if a random value between 0 and 29 is chosen. If you choose another score, however, such as 34, you will have 20 low digits, and 15 high digits, making the lower numbers more likely to be chosen. Never will the odds of getting a higher digit be greater than the odds of getting a lower digit; it only works one way (unless, of course, you count backwards. I'd be interested in seeing this done on golf scores--if only they were of a greater range).
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| Saturday, 09 May 2009, 16:11 | |
flying_cucco
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My current account certainly doesn't obey Benford's Law. My income is a set amount, My bills are almost exactly the same each month and I pay for most other things in cash - I always withdraw the limit from ATMs. None of those start with a one!
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