What is Benford's Law?

Benford’s Law is a surprising pattern that happens when we look at numbers in real life.

Imagine you have a bunch of different things, like how much money people earn, or the number of steps it takes to walk to school. If you count how often each digit from 1 to 9 appears as the first digit, you might expect them all to show up about the same amount of time. But that’s not what happens!

Numbers like 10, 25, and 37 start with 1, 2, and 3, but numbers like 98 or 99 are still starting with 9. So, if you have a list of all the numbers from 1 to 100, the number 1 shows up more often as the first digit than 9 does. It turns out that in many real-life situations, like how much money people earn or how long books are, smaller digits appear more often as the first digit.

Think about a clock. The numbers go from 1 to 12, but when you count seconds, they go up to 60! That’s like having bigger steps in your counting. In real life, things grow and change in ways that give smaller digits more chances to be first, just like how people start with smaller amounts of money before earning a lot.