Pie Chart of Benford's Law — First Digit Distribution

About this example

In many real-world numerical datasets (populations, river lengths, stock prices), the digit '1' appears as the leading digit about 30% of the time — far more than 9, which appears under 5%. Used in forensic accounting for fraud detection.

The data

• 1 — 30.1 %
• 2 — 17.6 %
• 3 — 12.5 %
• 4 — 9.7 %
• 5 — 7.9 %
• 6 — 6.7 %
• 7 — 5.8 %
• 8 — 5.1 %
• 9 — 4.6 %

Source

Benford's Law (Frank Benford, 1938).

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