Chapter 11: Q11-24BSC (page 533)
Benford鈥檚 Law. According to Benford鈥檚 law, a variety of different data sets include numbers with leading (first) digits that follow the distribution shown in the table below. In Exercises 21鈥24, test for goodness-of-fit with the distribution described by Benford鈥檚 law.
Leading Digits | Benford's Law: Distributuon of leading digits |
1 | 30.10% |
2 | 17.60% |
3 | 12.50% |
4 | 9.70% |
5 | 7.90% |
6 | 6.70% |
7 | 5.80% |
8 | 5.10% |
9 | 4.60% |
Author鈥檚 Computer Files The author recorded the leading digits of the sizes of the electronic document files for the current edition of this book. The leading digits have frequencies of 55, 25, 17, 24, 18, 12, 12, 3, and 4 (corresponding to the leading digits of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, respectively). Using a 0.05 significance level, test for goodness-of-fit with Benford鈥檚 law.
Short Answer
There is not enough evidence to conclude that the observed frequencies of the leading digits of the sizes of the electronic document files are not the same as the frequencies expected from Benford鈥檚 law.