WOLFRAM|DEMONSTRATIONS PROJECT

Country Data and Benford's Law

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property
ElectricityConsumption
1
29.%
2
18.%
3
14.%
4
8.8%
5
10.%
6
7.4%
7
4.1%
8
3.2%
9
5.5%
Benford's law, also called the first digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many sources of data, the leading digit is 1 almost one-third of the time. Moreover, subsequent values appear first with decreasing frequency; 9 occurs as a leading digit only one time in twenty. Many types of numerical data about countries approximately follow this law. This Demonstration shows the distributions of various types of numeric country data.