Benford's Law

Source status: Attributed to Claude

In many real-world data sets, the leading digit is 1 about 30% of the time and 9 only about 5% of the time (P(d) = log₁₀((d + 1) / d)).

- Claude

Category: Murphy's Miscellaneous Laws

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Corollaries

4 consequences of this law

After the first digit, the rest are close to random. Only the front of the number gives you away.

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Converting meters to feet does not help. The first digits still skew toward 1.

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Data that remain within a single order of magnitude, such as adult heights, do not obey Benford's Law.

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Numbers you make up will be spread evenly, and that is how they get caught.

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This law belongs with Murphy's Miscellaneous Laws, where small assumptions, timing, and system complexity tend to turn into memorable failures.

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