Benford's Law and the Preference for Number Sequences

Benford's Law states that in a wide variety of datasets, numbers starting with one occur more frequently than those starting with other digits, such as two, three, etc. This phenomenon has been observed in statistics ranging from molecular weights, baseball statistics, census data, to financial data like stock revenues and bank account balances. Even natural phenomena such as the size of rivers, earthquakes, populations, and stream flow follow this pattern. In the case of bank account balances, numbers starting with one occur 30.1% of the time, while numbers starting with nine occur only 4.6% of the time, making one approximately six times as likely as nine. Despite its inexplicable nature, numerous mathematicians confirm the existence of this deep preference for number sequences that start with ones, followed by twos, and then threes.