# Most commonly appearing first digit in (large) lists of numbers **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 21, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306 "2004-05-21T03:27:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/1 "2004-05-21T03:27:51Z")
A while ago in a GQ thread, someone mentioned what I believe were two related theorems in statistics. The first theorem was something along the lines of “if you have a list of items (such as city populations) ranked by order of magnitude, the kth item will be approximately 1/k[sup]th[/sup] of the largest”, eg. the third city on a list of citys’ populations will be approximately 1/3 that of the largest city. The second theorem said that something along the lines of “in lists of numbers (such as street addresses or country’s GNP’s), more numbers will start with ‘1’ than ‘2’, and more ‘2s’ than ‘3s’ etc.” I know this is pretty vague but hope you can point me to the link/thread. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/2 "2004-05-21T03:46:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Known as Benford’s law, it is a rule obeyed by a stunning variety of phenomena, from stock market prices to census data to the heat capacities of chemicals. Even a ragbag of figures extracted from newspapers will obey the law’s demands that around 30 per cent of the numbers will start with a 1, 18 per cent with a 2, right down to just 4.6 per cent starting with a 9. From [The Power of One](http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/one.html) [Benford’s Law at Mathworld](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenfordsLaw.html) New Scientist ran an article on the subject in July 1999. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/3 "2004-05-21T03:55:37Z")
The first one is Zipf’s Law: [http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do\_you\_know/zipfLaw.shtml](http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/zipfLaw.shtml) ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/4 "2004-05-21T03:56:59Z")
Indeed! Thank you both. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/5 "2004-05-21T22:02:48Z")
By the way, neither of those is a theorem. The first might be an empirical rule of thumb, good for many situations, but it’s far from universal. The second-tallest man in the world, for instance, is not half the height of the tallest man in the world. Really, it’s just a statement that a certain sort of distribution is common in the real world. The second might be the bare-bones nugget of a provable statement, but you would need a lot more specification about the distributions, etc., to make it proveable. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-commonly-appearing-first-digit-in-large-lists-of-numbers/246306/6 "2004-05-21T23:35:41Z")
You are quite right, **Chronos**. I was being lazy by using the term “theorem”. But teach me, though, please. Isn’t “Benford’s law”, as described in the Mathworld link above (which I don’t really understand) pretty close to a theorem?