| 释义 |
Benford's law, n. Statistics.
Brit. |ˈbɛnfədz ˌlɔː|, U.S. |ˈbɛnfərdz ˌlɔ|, |ˈbɛnfərdz ˌlɑ|
[‹ the genitive of the name of Frank Benford (1887–1948), American physicist and electrical engineer, who described the law in 1938 (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 78 551) + law n.1
The phenomenon had prevously been noted by Simon Newcomb in 1881 (Amer. Jrnl. Math. 4 39).]
The phenomenon that, in large sets of numbers with a smooth but not a normal distribution, the frequency with which a particular digit occurs as the leading digit of a number decreases from 1 to 9 (being about 30% for 1 and 4.6% for 9).
1969R. A. Raimi in Sci. Amer. Dec. 111/1 The pattern..will give ever closer approximations to Benford's law, but the proof of this is a fairly subtle theorem of number theory. 1972Amer. Statistician 26 65/1 Benford..found that the frequency of the digit p being the first digit of a decimal number was very closely approximated by log (p + 1) - log p. This has become known as Benford's law. 1997S. Dehaene Number Sense iv. 112 If you draw several random numbers from essentially any smooth distribution, the numbers will start more often with 1 than with 9. This singular phenomenon is called Benford's law. 1999Independent on Sunday 4 Apr. (Review Suppl.) 38/3 Tax officials are checking the numbers in tax returns to see whether or not they deviate from Benford's law. |
