From uniform distributions to Benford's law

From uniform distributions to Benford's law

Élise Janvresse and Thierry de la Rue

Source: J. Appl. Probab. Volume 41, Number 4 (2004), 1203-1210.

Abstract

We provide a new, probabilistic explanation for the appearance of Benford's law in everyday-life numbers, by showing that it arises naturally when we consider mixtures of uniform distributions. Then we connect our result to a result of Flehinger, for which we provide a shorter proof, and the speed of convergence.

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Primary Subjects: 60J10, 11K99

Keywords: Benford's law; first-digit law; mantissa; uniform distribution; coupling method

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Links and Identifiers

Permanent link to this document: http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.jap/1101840566
Digital Object Identifier: doi:10.1239/jap/1101840566
Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet): MR2122815
Zentralblatt MATH identifier: 02151069

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