ABSTRACT
B enford’s law had its beginnings over a century ago when American astrono-mer Simon Newcomb noticed something curious about tables of common logarithms. Pages at the beginning of the table appeared significantly more worn than pages near the end, suggesting mathematicians and scientists were looking up numbers beginning with lower digits (1, 2, ...) more often than higher digits (..., 8, 9). (Simon Newcomb is the great-great-uncle of William Newcomb, the creator of Newcomb’s paradox). This would suggest that numbers being looked up (measures of naturally occurring physical quantities) begin more often with 1 than any other single digit, a highly unexpected phenomenon.
