666187 external_news 1677512549 1677685051 It was anticipated more than a century ago that the distribution of real-world observations' first digits would not be uniform but would exhibit a trend where numbers with lower first digits (1,2,...) occur more frequently than those with higher first digits (...,8,9). This phenomenon is known as Benford's law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law. It was finally proven in 1995 by Theodore P. Hill, emeritus professor in the School of Mathematics. This law has been found to apply to a wide range of datasets, from countries' populations to financial data, physical constants and earthquakes. 

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