RE: The Prize #3

["Gutzwiller, Michael" <mgutzwiller@lanvision.com>]

I would _not_ expect any of the magnitude digits to follow Benford's law.
In general Benford's law applies only to first non-zero digits for unrelated
items.  The classic example is a list of physical constants.  The magnitude
digits will be strongly biased toward higher digits at least until you start
to reach the limiting magnitude of the instrument.

Thanks,

Mike Gutzwiller



-----Original Message-----
From: Creager, Robert S [mailto:CreagRS@LOUISVILLE.STORTEK.COM] 
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 2:25 PM
To: 'Fraser Farrell'; tass@listserv.wwa.com
Subject: RE: The Prize #3




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com
> [mailto:owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com] On Behalf Of Fraser Farrell
> Sent: September 20, 2004 10:58 AM
> To: tass@listserv.wwa.com
> Cc: Robert Creager
> 
> But I would expect the magnitude's second and subsequent
> digits to follow 
> Benford's Law. Easy enough to check of course, using a 
> trivial change to your 
> SQL.

Really?  I wouldn't expect that at all.  What you're saying is that if I
sample the frequency of all the individual numbers that go into one number,
across the entire data space, it's won't be a random distribution?  That's a
little more complicated to do.  Might need a little Perl and more
computation time.

Does PI follow this out to whatever huge place it's been calculated to?

Cheers,
Rob






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