Benford's law only seems strange until you realise natural phenomena tend to express logarithmic functions while our commonly used system of counting counting and measuring is not.
It's still a bit of a brain f--- when you first encounter it. I found it easier to get using plotting tools, as opposed to aggregating lists of numbers and measurements.
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Benford's law only seems strange until you realise natural phenomena tend to express logarithmic functions while our commonly used system of counting counting and measuring is not.
It's still a bit of a brain f--- when you first encounter it. I found it easier to get using plotting tools, as opposed to aggregating lists of numbers and measurements.
Exactly. I immediately thought it's an artifact of our base-10 system.
except that it applies to any base-n system. It's an artifact of the underlying system, not the base value.
What about base-e?
That's just silly. On the other hand, base 2i would be very efficient: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quater-imaginary_base
Really, why don't we have a transcendental numbering system? Also, I can't imagine it could make our financial markets any more irrational.